More than 100 killed, over 150 injured in fire at wedding party in Iraq
Initial reports indicate that fireworks used during the wedding ceremony may have been responsible for the blaze.
Soldiers and emergency responders gather around ambulances outside the Hamdaniyah General Hospital in Al-Hamdaniyah, Iraq [Zaid Al-Obeidi/AFP]
Published On 26 Sep 202326 Sep 2023
More than 100 people have been killed and more than 150 injured in a fire that ripped through a wedding celebration in Iraq’s northern Nineveh province, local officials and emergency services said.
Nineveh Deputy Governor Hassan al-Allaq told the Reuters news agency that 113 people have been confirmed dead so far. The fire was reported to have started at approximately 10:45pm local time (19:45 GMT) on Tuesday night.
Najim al-Jubouri, the provincial governor of Nineveh, cautioned early on Wednesday that there were no final casualty figures yet from the blaze, which suggests the death toll still may rise.
Iraq’s official INA news agency reported earlier that more than 150 people were also injured in the blaze, which engulfed an event hall in the province’s Hamdaniyah district where the wedding celebration was taking place. Hamdaniyah is located outside of the northern city of Mosul, some 400km (around 250 miles) northwest of the capital Baghdad.
Iraq’s civil defence said initial reports indicated that fireworks used during the celebration may have been the cause of the fire. “Preliminary information indicates that fireworks were used during a wedding, which triggered a fire in the hall,” civil defence authorities said in a statement early on Wednesday.
Security forces keep watch next to ambulances at a hospital where people have been taken for treatment following a fire that engulfed a wedding celebration in Iraq’s Nineveh province on September 27, 2023 [Khalid Al-Mousily/Reuters]
Al Jazeera’s Mahmoud Abdelwahed, reporting from Baghdad, said that fireworks are a common feature of wedding celebrations in Iraq and that some 1,000 people were reported to have been present at the celebration when the fire broke out.
Flammable material used in the construction of the event hall is suspected to have contributed to the huge blaze, Abdelwahed said.
Iraq’s civil defence reported the presence of prefabricated panels at the event hall that were “highly flammable and contravened safety standards”.
“The fire caused some parts of the ceiling to fall due to the use of highly flammable, low-cost construction materials,” civil defence authorities said in their statement.
Images from the aftermath of the fire showed emergency workers clambering over rubble and a collapsed roof with twisted and charred metal at the gutted event hall.
An emergency worker walks over rubble at the site of the fire at a wedding celebration in Hamdaniyah district, Nineveh province, Iraq, on September 27, 2023 [Khalid Al-Mousily/Reuters]
Ambulances and medical crews were dispatched to the site of the fire by federal Iraqi authorities and authorities in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region, according to official statements.
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Iraq’s Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani has ordered an investigation into the fire and asked the country’s Interior and Health officials to provide relief, his office said in a statement online.
Video clips posted on social media and purportedly taken in the moments before the fire take holds, burning pieces of panelling are seen falling from the ceiling of the event hall. Wedding guests are also seen jumping up from tables and attempting to flee to safety.
Iraq’s ministry of health said that “medical aid trucks” have been dispatched to Nineveh from Baghdad and other provinces.
