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MOSUL, Iraq — A hearth that raced by way of a corridor internet hosting a Christian marriage ceremony in northern Iraq killed a minimum of 100 individuals and injured 150 others, the authorities mentioned on Wednesday, warning that the dying toll may rise greater.
The hearth occurred within the Hamdaniya space of Nineveh Province, the authorities mentioned. That could be a predominantly Christian space simply exterior of the town of Mosul, some 205 miles northwest of the capital, Baghdad.
Tv footage confirmed flames speeding over the marriage corridor as the fireplace took maintain. Within the blaze’s aftermath, solely charred metallic and particles could possibly be seen as individuals walked by way of the scene, the one gentle coming from tv cameras and onlookers’ cellphones.
Survivors arrived at native hospitals, receiving oxygen and bandages, as relations milled by way of hallways and outdoors.
A Well being Ministry spokesman, Saif al-Badr, gave the casualty figures through the state-run Iraqi Information Company.
“All efforts are being made to supply reduction to these affected by the unlucky accident,” Mr. al-Badr mentioned.
Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani ordered an investigation into the fireplace and requested officers with Iraq’s inside and well being ministries to supply reduction, his workplace mentioned in a press release on-line.
Najim al-Jubouri, the provincial governor of Nineveh, mentioned among the injured had been transferred to regional hospitals. He cautioned that there have been not but closing casualty figures from the blaze, which advised that the dying toll would possibly rise additional.
There was no quick official phrase on the reason for the blaze, however preliminary reviews by the Kurdish tv information channel Rudaw advised that fireworks on the venue might have began it.
Civil protection officers quoted by the Iraqi Information Company described the marriage corridor’s exterior as being adorned with extremely flammable cladding that’s unlawful within the nation.
It wasn’t instantly clear why the authorities had allowed the cladding for use within the corridor, however corruption and mismanagement stay endemic in Iraq 20 years after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.
Whereas some sorts of cladding could be made with fire-resistant materials, specialists say the varieties that caught hearth on the marriage ceremony corridor, and have caught hearth elsewhere, weren’t designed to fulfill strict security requirements, and have typically been put into buildings with none breaks that might sluggish or halt a potential blaze. Such cladding was an element within the 2017 hearth at Grenfell Tower in London, which killed 72 individuals, and in a number of high-rise fires within the United Arab Emirates.
The hearth in Iraq was the most recent catastrophe to strike the nation’s shrinking Christian minority, which over the previous 20 years has been violently focused by extremists, first from Al Qaeda and later from the Islamic State militant group. Though the Nineveh plains, the historic homeland of Iraqi Christians, have been wrested again from the Islamic State six years in the past, some cities there are nonetheless principally rubble and lack primary companies. Many Christians have left for Europe, Australia or the USA.
The variety of Christians in Iraq in the present day is estimated at 150,000, in comparison with 1.5 million in 2003. Iraq’s complete inhabitants is greater than 40 million.
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