According to Iraqi state media, more than 100 people were killed and 150 people injured in a fire at a wedding party in the Hamdaniya district of Iraq’s Nineveh province.
The health department in Nineveh put the death toll at 114. Health ministry spokesman Saif al-Badr had previously put the number of injured at 150.
“Every effort is being made to provide assistance to the victims of the unfortunate accident,” al-Badr said.
The fire spread through a large event hall in the northeastern region after fireworks were lit during the celebration, state media said.
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Video from a Portal correspondent at the scene showed firefighters climbing over the charred rubble of the building in search of survivors.
“We saw the fire pulsating and coming from the hall. Those who made it got out, and those who didn’t got stuck. Even those who managed to get out were broken,” said Imad Yohana, a 34-year-old who escaped the inferno.
Eyewitnesses at the scene said the building caught fire at around 10:45 p.m. local time and that hundreds of people were present at the time of the incident.
Security forces gathered at the site of the deadly fire in the Hamdaniya district of Mosul, Iraq. Photo: Farid Abdulwahed/APPreliminary information suggests the building was made of highly flammable construction materials, which contributed to its rapid collapse, state media said.
Officials said ambulances and medical personnel were dispatched to the scene by Iraqi federal authorities and authorities in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region.
At the main hospital in Hamdaniya – a predominantly Christian town east of Mosul also known as Qaraqosh – an AFP photographer saw ambulances arriving with sirens blaring and dozens of people gathering in the courtyard to donate blood.
People were also seen gathering outside the open doors of a refrigerated truck carrying black body bags.
Najim al-Jubouri, the provincial governor of Nineveh, said some of the injured had been taken to regional hospitals. He warned that there were no final figures on the fire’s victims.
In a brief statement, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohamed Shia al-Sudani called on health and interior ministers to “mobilize all rescue efforts” to help the fire victims and announced an investigation.
The Health Ministry said “medical supplies trucks” had been dispatched to the region from Baghdad and other provinces, adding that its teams had been mobilized in Nineveh to treat the injured.
Like many Christian towns in the Nineveh Plains, Qaraqosh and its churches were systematically looted by jihadists from the Islamic State group after they entered the city in 2014.
After the group’s fall in 2017, the city was slowly rebuilt and was the site of a visit by Pope Francis in March 2021.
Safety standards in Iraq’s construction and transport sectors are often flouted and the country, whose infrastructure is in poor condition after decades of conflict, is regularly the scene of deadly fires and accidents.
In July 2021, more than 60 people died in a fire in the Covid department of a hospital in the south of the country.
And in April of that year, exploding oxygen tanks sparked a fire at a hospital for Covid patients in Baghdad, killing more than 80 people.