FIRE RIPPED THROUGH WEDDING CELEBRATIONS IN IRAQ’S NINEVEH, KILLING AT LEAST 100

Wed 27 September 2023:

At least 100 people are dead and more than 150 injured after a fire ripped through a wedding celebration in northern Iraq. According to the Iraq’s health ministry, many of the injured are in “unstable condition” and the critically injured are being taken to hospitals that specialise in burns.

Iraq’s civil defence said in a statement: “Preliminary information indicates that fireworks were used during a wedding, which triggered a fire in the hall.”

At least nine people working at the banquet hall that caught fire during a wedding reception have been arrested by security forces from Nineveh governorate.

Major General Abdullah al-Jubouri, operations commander in Nineveh, told reporters that those arrested helped manage al-Haitham Hall.

Al-Jubouri also said federal security forces are coordinating with authorities in the semiautonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq to arrest the owner of the hall.

Sources from Nineveh Governorate told Al Jazeera correspondent Esther Hakim that some of the victims died of suffocation, while many wedding guests were trying to leave through the banquet hall’s main entrance, causing a crush.

The sources said that the hall also did not have the proper equipment to put out the fire, which allowed it to spread quickly.

Hakim also reported that civil defence teams have recovered all the bodies left in the building, noting that the injured were transferred to hospitals in Nineveh and the Kurdistan Regional Government province.

Iraq’s Ministry of Health says ambulances and medical teams are being deployed to Nineveh to help evacuate many of those injured in the fire.

A ministry spokesman told Al Jazeera that a large number of those injured are in “unstable condition” and the critically injured have been referred to specialist hospitals that can handle burn victims.

Bride and groom survive but are in poor ‘psychological condition’, relative says

Relatives of the bride and the groom confirm to Iraqi Channel 1 that the couple is fine and survived the fire but they are in a difficult state mentally.

“We miraculously left the place. The groom and the bride were among the people who survived the accident. I was just with them, and their psychological condition was very difficult. I took some wounded to the hospital. What I saw in the hospital is difficult to describe. Many of the victims were burned and dead,” a relative told the channel.

The couple was about to do a slow dance, and something was lit up for it, sparking the massive blaze, an injured woman told the broadcaster Rudaw from a hospital gurney.

Iraqi president calls for investigation into deadly fire

Iraq’s President Abdul Latif Jamal Rashid has called for an investigation into the deadly fire in the province of Nineveh that left at least 100 people dead.

“What happened to our children in the Al-Hamdaniya district is a painful tragedy, and an accident that tore our hearts and the hearts of all Iraqis,” the president stated in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

He said it was crucial to open an investigation to know “the circumstances of the accident and take all safety measures to prevent its recurrence”.

“Our deepest sympathies and sincere condolences to the families of the victims and a speedy recovery to the injured,” he added.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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