Civil protection members examine the scene of a fireplace that broke out throughout a marriage at an occasion corridor in Al-Hamdaniyah, Iraq on September 27, 2023. ZAID AL-OBEIDI/AFP through Getty Photos
By FARID ABDULWAHED, Related Press
MOSUL, Iraq (AP) — A fireplace that raced by way of a corridor internet hosting a Christian wedding ceremony in northern Iraq killed a minimum of 100 folks and injured 150 others, authorities stated Wednesday, warning the demise toll might rise.
The hearth occurred in Iraq’s Nineveh province in its Hamdaniya space, authorities stated. That’s a predominantly Christian space simply outdoors of town of Mosul, some 335 kilometers (205 miles) northwest of the capital, Baghdad.
Tv footage confirmed flames dashing over the marriage corridor as the fireplace took maintain. Within the blaze’s aftermath, solely charred steel and particles may very well be seen as folks walked by way of the scene of the fireplace, the one gentle coming from tv cameras and the lights of onlookers’ cellphones.
Survivors arrived at native hospitals, receiving oxygen and bandaged, as their households milled by way of hallways and outdoors as staff organized extra oxygen cylinders.
The well being division in Nineveh province raised the demise toll to 114. Well being Ministry spokesman Saif al-Badr earlier put the variety of injured at 150 through the state-run Iraqi Information Company.
“All efforts are being made to offer aid to these affected by the unlucky accident,” al-Badr stated.
Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani ordered an investigation into the fireplace and requested the nation’s Inside and Well being officers to offer aid, his workplace stated in a press release on-line.
Najim al-Jubouri, the provincial governor of Nineveh, stated a number of the injured had been transferred to regional hospitals. He cautioned there have been no remaining casualty figures but from the blaze, which suggests the demise toll nonetheless could rise.
There was no speedy official phrase on the reason for the blaze however preliminary stories by the Kurdish tv information channel Rudaw prompt fireworks on the venue could have sparked the fireplace.
Civil protection officers quoted by the Iraqi Information Company described the marriage corridor’s exterior as being adorned with extremely flammable cladding that have been unlawful within the nation.
“The hearth led to the collapse of components of the corridor because of using extremely flammable, low-cost constructing supplies that collapse inside minutes when the fireplace breaks out,” civil protection stated.
It wasn’t instantly clear why authorities in Iraq allowed the cladding for use on the corridor, although corruption and mismanagement stays endemic twenty years after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.
Whereas some kinds of cladding will be made with fire-resistant materials, consultants say people who have caught fireplace on the wedding ceremony corridor and elsewhere weren’t designed to fulfill stricter security requirements and infrequently have been put onto buildings with none breaks to sluggish or halt a attainable blaze. That features the 2017 Grenfell Fireplace in London that killed 72 folks within the best lack of life in a fireplace on British soil since World Conflict II, in addition to a number of high-rise fires within the United Arab Emirates.
The hearth was the most recent catastrophe to strike Iraq’s shrinking Christian minority, which over the previous twenty years has been violently focused by extremists first from al-Qaida after which the Islamic State militant group. Though the Nineveh plains, the historic homeland, was wrested again from the Islamic State group six years in the past, some cities are nonetheless largely rubble and lack fundamental companies. Many Christians have left for Europe, Australia or america.
The variety of Christians in Iraq at the moment is estimated at 150,000, in comparison with 1.5 million in 2003. Iraq’s complete inhabitants is greater than 40 million.
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Related Press author Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.
