At least 100 people were killed and 150 others were injured when A fire broke out in a hall where a wedding reception was taking place in northern Iraqaccording “provisional account” which the authorities announced today.

Flames destroyed the banquet hall where last Tuesday night it was full of guests at a wedding in the Christian town of Karakos, also known as Hamdaniya.

According to rescue crews, the are responsible for the tragedy “fireworks” that were thrown inside the hall, the “highly flammable building materials” of which it was made, but also the fact that there were no emergency exits.

Shortly after midnight AFP photographer saw several ambulances arrive at Hamdaniyah’s main hospitallocated east of Mosul. Dozens of people were gathered in the corridors of the hospital, among them relatives of the victims. Others waited outside a refrigerated truck in which the bodies of the dead were bagged.

Closed emergency exits

The health authorities of the province of Nineveh, where Karakos is located, “they have recorded 100 dead and more than 150 injured from the fire”the official INA agency reported, speaking of “preliminary account»while multiple officials reported conflicting numbers.

“Most of the injured have suffered burns or suffocation”said Saif al-Badr, a spokesman for the Ministry of Health, who also spoke of trampling.

Among the victims are “men, women and children”said Jaudat Abdel Rahman, spokesman for Civil Protection.

Nezm al-Jubourigovernor of the province of Nineveh, declared a week of mourning.

Civil Protection reported that in the banquet hall there were prefabricated curtains “particularly flammables that did not comply with safety rules.”

“Preliminary information indicates that fireworks were used (inside), which caused the fire in the hall”, according to a statement from the service. From the flames “pieces of the roof fell, as highly flammable and low-cost building materials had been used”, the same source pointed out.

Civil Protection spoke of “the release of toxic gases due to the burning of curtains” that contained plastic.

“The emergency exits were closed, there was only the central entrance”said Abdel Rahman.

Video of the wedding ceremony, posted on social mediaappears to show flames engulfing the decoration on the hall’s ceiling, as shouts of excitement give way to screams of panic.

Another video shows the newlyweds dancing while pieces of burning material begin to fall from the ceiling.

Arrests

Interior Ministry spokesman General Saad Maan said that “nine workers arrested”while “four arrest warrants have been issued against the owners” of the hall.

In Iraq, safety rules are rarely respected, both in the construction and transportation sectors, resulting in frequent fatal fires or accidents in the country.

In July 2021 a fire in the covid ward of a hospital in southern Iraq had claimed the lives of more than 60 people. A few months earlier, in April, an explosion of oxygen tanks caused a fire in a Baghdad hospital, killing more than 80 people.

Today, in a statement, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani asked the health and interior ministers to “mobilize all means of rescue” to help the victims of the tragedy.