A fire broke out during a wedding at an event hall in the northern Iraqi town of Qaraqosh, killing at least 100 people and injuring more than 150, officials reported early Wednesday.
An AFP photographer witnessed ambulances arrive with sirens blasting and hundreds of people waiting in the courtyard to donate blood at the major hospital in the largely Christian town east of Mosul.
Others were spotted congregating in front of the open doors of a refrigerated truck carrying black corpse bags.
According to Iraq’s official INA news agency, health officials in Nineveh province “counted 100 dead and more than 150 injured in the fire at a marriage hall in Hamdaniyah,” as the town is also called.
Saif al-Badr, a spokesman for the health ministry, confirmed the death toll to AFP.
According to Badr, the majority of the injured were being treated for burns or oxygen deprivation, and there had also been mass crushes in the crowded reception hall.
The Iraqi Red Crescent said it had recorded more than 450 casualties but couldn’t say how many had died.
In a statement, civil defence authorities reported the presence of prefabricated panels inside the event hall that were “highly flammable and contravened safety standards”.
The danger was compounded by the “release of toxic gases linked to the combustion of the panels”, which contained plastic.
“The fire caused some parts of the ceiling to fall due to the use of highly flammable, low-cost construction materials,” the statement said, with “preliminary information” suggesting fireworks were to blame for the blaze.
‘We Were Suffocating’
Wedding guest Rania Waad, who sustained a burn to her hand, said that as the bride and groom “were slow dancing, the fireworks started to climb to the ceiling (and) the whole hall went up in flames”.
“We couldn’t see anything,” the 17-year-old said, choking back sobs. “We were suffocating, we didn’t know how to get out.”
Early Wednesday, emergency personnel were seen digging through the burned ruins of the event hall with flashlights, investigating the situation.
In a brief statement, Prime Minister Mohamed Shia al-Sudani urged the health and interior ministers to “mobilise all rescue efforts” to assist the fire victims.
According to the health ministry, “medical aid trucks” have been rushed to the area from Baghdad and other provinces, and its personnel in Nineveh have been mobilized to care for the injured.
Safety rules are frequently ignored in Iraq’s construction sector, and the country’s infrastructure, which is in disarray after decades of strife, is frequently the site of tragic fires and accidents.
In July 2021, a fire in the Covid unit of a hospital in southern Iraq killed more than 60 people.
In April of the same year, exploding oxygen tanks sparked a fire at a Baghdad facility specialized to Covid patients, killing more than 80 people.
Qaraqosh, like many other Christian communities in the Nineveh Plains northeast of Mosul, was ransacked by Islamic State jihadists after they took control of the area in 2014.
After the group’s expulsion in 2017, Qaraqosh and its churches were gradually repaired, and Pope Francis visited the town in March 2021.