At least 64 people died and more than 100 were wounded on Monday when a massive fire engulfed the COVID-19 isolation ward of an Iraqi hospital, a health official said.
The fire broke out at al-Hussein Teaching Hospital in the southern city of Nasiriyah and was brought under control by local civil defense forces.
A medical source with the local health directorate told reporters that the “main reason behind the fire ... was the explosion of oxygen tanks.”
Photo: AFP
“Sixty-four [bodies] were retrieved and 39 identified and handed over to their families,” another source at the Dhi Qar Forensic Science Department said.
“Medical teams and relatives of victims are finding it difficult to identify the rest of the corpses,” the second source said, adding that the death toll might rise further with more bodies feared buried under the rubble.
The deadly hospital blaze is the second such fire in Iraq in three months. Outside the hospital, dozens of young demonstrators protested.
“The [political] parties have burned us,” they shouted in unison.
The fire also prompted furious calls on social media for the resignation of top officials.
Local authorities imposed a state of emergency in Dhi Qar Governorate, of which Nasiriyah is the capital, and ordered doctors on leave to help treat the injured.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhemi held an emergency meeting with ministers and security heads to “find out the causes” of the fire, his office wrote on Twitter yesterday.
Dhi Qar’s health chief and the hospital’s head were detained and questioned by police, his office said.
Kadhemi also dispatched emergency medical aid to the governorate.
“The catastrophe of Al-Hussein Hospital is clear proof of the failure to protect the lives of Iraqis, and it is time to put an end to this,” Iraqi Speaker of Parliament Mohamed al-Halbousi wrote on Twitter.
The Iraqi Ministry of the Interior said on Facebook that the fire tore through temporary structures erected next to the main building, but did not specify the cause.
Videos shared online showed thick clouds of smoke billowing from the hospital.
In April, a fire at a Baghdad COVID-19 hospital killed 82 people and injured 110, sparked by the explosion of badly stored oxygen cylinders.
Many of the victims in the April fire were on respirators and were burned or suffocated in the resulting inferno that spread rapidly through the hospital, where dozens of relatives were visiting patients in the intensive care unit.
The April fire led to widespread anger, resulting in the suspension and subsequent resignation of then-Iraqi minister of health Hassan al-Tamimi.
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