More than 100 people have been killed and 150 injured in a fire at a wedding party in the Hamdaniya district of Iraq’s Nineveh province, according to Iraqi state media.
The Nineveh health department put the death toll at 114. Health ministry spokesman Saif al-Badr had earlier put the number of injured at 150.
“All efforts are being made to help those affected by the unfortunate accident,” al-Badr said.
“Most of the injured are suffering from burns and suffocation,” he said, adding that there were also crowds of people at the scene.
Civil defence officials said preliminary information suggested that fireworks were to blame for the blaze, and the Kurdish television news channel Rudaw broadcast footage of fireworks shooting up from the floor of the hall and setting a chandelier ablaze.
Footage on other local TV stations appeared to show the bride and groom on the dance floor when the fire broke out on Tuesday night, stunned by the sight of the burning rubble. It wasn’t immediately clear if they were among the injured.
Eyewitnesses at the scene said the building caught fire at around 10.45pm local time and that hundreds of people were present at the time of the incident. Children were among those burned.
Wedding attendee Rania Waad, who suffered a burn to her hand, said that as the bride and groom were “slow dancing, the fireworks started to go up to the ceiling and the whole hall went up in flames”.
“We couldn’t see anything,” the 17-year-old said. “We were suffocating, we didn’t know how to get out”.
“We saw the fire pulsating, coming out of the hall,” said Imad Yohana, a 34-year-old who escaped the inferno. “Those who made it got out and those who didn’t got stuck. Even those who managed to get out were broken.”
In a statement, civil defence authorities reported the presence of prefabricated panels inside the hall, which were “highly flammable and violated safety standards”.
The danger was compounded by the “release of toxic gases associated with 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 that fireworks were to blame.
Ambulances and medical teams were dispatched to the site by Iraqi federal authorities and authorities in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, officials said.
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.
Ahmed Dubardani, a provincial health official, told Rudaw that many of the injured had suffered severe burns.
“Most of them were completely burned and some others had 50 to 60 per cent burns on their bodies,” Dubardani said. “This is not good at all. Most of them were not in good condition.”
In a brief statement, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohamed Shia al-Sudani called on the ministers of health and interior to “mobilise all rescue efforts” to help the victims of the fire and announced an investigation.
The Ministry of Health said that “medical trucks” had been sent to the area from Baghdad and other provinces, adding that its teams in Nineveh had been mobilised to care for the injured.
Like many Christian towns in the Nineveh Plain, Qaraqosh and its churches were methodically looted by Islamic State group jihadists after they entered the town in 2014.
The town was slowly rebuilt after the group was ousted in 2017, and was the site of a visit by Pope Francis in March 2021.
Safety standards in Iraq’s construction and transport sectors are often disregarded, and the country, whose infrastructure is in disrepair after decades of conflict, is regularly the scene of deadly fires and accidents.
In July 2021, more than 60 people died in a fire at the Covid unit of a hospital in the south of the country.
And in April that year, exploding oxygen tanks caused a fire at a Baghdad hospital for covid patients, killing more than 80 people.
