Over 80 die in Iraq hospital fire, UAE sympathises with victims
Many of the victims were on respirators when the blaze at Ibn Al Khatib hospital started with an explosion caused by ‘a fault in storage of oxygen cylinders,’ said medical sources
ABU DHABI: The UAE on Sunday expressed its condolences over the victims of the tragic hospital accident in the Iraqi capital.
More than 80 people died early on Sunday in a fire that ripped through an Iraqi COVID-19 hospital, as anxious families searched for missing relatives and the government suspended key health officials for alleged negligence.
Many of the victims were on respirators and were suffocated or burned in the smoke and flames when the blaze, at eastern Baghdad’s Ibn Al Khatib hospital, started with an explosion caused by “a fault in the storage of oxygen cylinders,” medical sources said.
The health ministry said 82 people were killed and 110 wounded, while the Iraqi Human Rights Commission said 28 of the victims were patients who had to be taken off ventilators to escape the flames.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation stated that the UAE expresses its sincere condolences and sympathy to the sisterly Republic of Iraq, government and people, for the victims of the tragic accident resulting from a blaze at the Ibn Al Khatib hospital in Baghdad and affirms its solidarity with the Republic of Iraq in this casualty.
The ministry added, “The leadership, government and people of the UAE offer sincere condolences to the families of the victims of this tragedy and wish a speedy recovery to the injured.”
‘Volcanoes of fire:’ The flames, described by one witness as “volcanoes of fire,” swept through the intensive care unit of the Ibn Al Khatib hospital, which tends exclusively to COVID-19 patients with severe symptoms. Officials said the blaze, which also injured 110 people, was set off by an exploding oxygen cylinder.
Nurse Maher Ahmed was called to the scene late on Saturday to help evacuate patients.
“I could not have imagined it would be a massive blaze like that,” he said. The flames overwhelmed the hospital’s second floor isolation hall within three to four minutes of the oxygen cylinder exploding, he said. “Volcanoes of fire.”
Most of those killed suffered severe burns, he said. Others were overcome by smoke, unwilling to leave behind relatives hooked up to ventilators. Ahmed said the patients could not be moved. “They would have minutes to live without oxygen.”
He said he and others watched helplessly as one patient struggled to breathe amid the smoke.
Health minister suspended: Widespread negligence on the part of health officials is to blame for the fire, Prime Minister Mustafa Al Kadhimi said.
Following a special cabinet meeting to discuss the blaze, the government suspended key officials, including the health minister and the governor of Baghdad province. Other officials, including the hospital director, were dismissed from their posts.
It took firefighters and civil defence teams until early on Sunday to put out the flames.
Among the dead were at least 28 patients on ventilators, tweeted Ali Al Bayati, a spokesman of the country’s independent Human Rights Commission, a semi-official body.
Paramedics carried the bodies, many burned beyond recognition, to Al Zafaraniya Hospital, where Ahmed said forensics teams will atempt to identify them by matching DNA samples to relatives.
By midday on Sunday, relatives were still searching anxiously for loved ones.
“Please, two of my relatives are missing. ... I am going to die (without news about them),” posted a young woman on social media ater a fruitless search for her family members. “I hope someone can help us find Sadi Abdul Kareem and Samir Abdul Kareem, they were in the ICU.”
Roky Kareem, 30, was looking frantically for his friend Riyam Rahman, a pharmacist, who was visiting her mother at the hospital. Riyam’s mother, Basima was admited to Ibh Al Khatib 45 days ago with complications from COVID-19.
“All we know is they were in the room next to where the fire started,” he said. “Her phone is switched off, and her family has gone to every hospital trying to find them.”
The fire happened as Iraq grapples with a severe second wave of the coronavirus pandemic. Daily virus cases now average around 8,000, the highest level since Iraq began recording infection rates early last year. At least 15,200 people have died of coronavirus in Iraq among at least 100,000 confirmed cases.
The prime minster convened the special cabinet session hours ater the flames broke out. In addition to suspending the health minister, Hasan Al Tamimi, and Baghdad’s governor, the cabinet ordered an investigation of the health minister and key hospital officials responsible for overseeing safety measures.
The cabinet also fired the director-general of the Baghdad health department in the Al Rusafa area, where the hospital is located, and the hospital’s director of engineering and maintenance, according to a statement from the Health Ministry and the prime minister’s office.
“Negligence in such maters is not a mistake, but a crime for which all negligent parties must bear responsibility,” Kadhimi said ater a meeting.
A fire that ravaged a COVID-19 hospital in Iraq’s capital killed 82 people pre-dawn on Sunday, sparking angry calls for officials to be sacked in a country with long-dilapidated health infrastructure.
Many of the victims were on respirators when the blaze at Baghdad’s Ibn Al Khatib hospital started with an explosion caused by “a fault in the storage of oxygen cylinders,” medical sources said.
Flames spread quickly across multiple floors in the middle of the night, as dozens of relatives were at the bedsides of the 30 patients in the hospital’s intensive care unit where the most severe Covid-19 cases are treated, a medical source said.
“The hospital had no fire protection system and false ceilings allowed the flames to spread to highly flammable products,” Iraq’s civil defence arm said.
Many “victims died because they had to be moved and were taken off ventilators, while the others were suffocated by the smoke,” it added.
The country’s human rights commission called on the prime minister, who has so far suspended several officials, to fire Health Minister Hassan Al Tamimi and “bring him to justice,” as anger swelled on social media.
At least 23 deaths were reported by medics in the immediate atermath of the fire, with an official toll of 82 killed and 110 wounded announced later by the interior ministry.
Videos on social media showed firefighters batling to put out the blaze as patients and their relatives tried to flee the building.
“It was the people (civilians) who got the wounded out,” Amir, 35, said, saying he saved his hospitalised brothers “by the skin of his teeth.”
Iraq’s hospitals have been worn down by decades of conflict and poor investment, with shortages of medicines and hospital beds.
Prime Minister Mustafa Al Kadhemi called for an investigation into the cause of the blaze and declared three days of national mourning. Parliament announced it would devote its Monday session to the tragedy.
Ater daybreak, dozens of tall oxygen cylinders that had been evacuated could be seen lined up outside the building, alongside gurneys and scattered debris, an AFP photographer said.
More than 200 patients in all were rescued, according to the health ministry.
The fire - caused by negligence oten linked to endemic corruption in Iraq, according to several sources - sparked anger, with a hashtag demanding the health minister be sacked trending on Twiter.
Baghdad Governor Mohammed Jaber called on the health ministry “to establish a commission of enquiry so that those who did not do their jobs may be brought to justice.”
In a statement, the government’s human rights commission said the incident was “a crime against patients exhausted by Covid-19 who put their lives in the hands of the health ministry and its institutions.
“Instead of being treated, (they) perished in flames,” it added.
One of the victims of the fire, Ali Ibrahim, 52, had been treated for Covid-19 at Ibn Al Khatib and was buried by his family on Sunday at Zaafaraniya, a neighbourhood near the hospital.
“He had just spent 12 days in hospital and was due to be discharged on Saturday evening ater recovering. He was just waiting for the result of the last Covid-19 test,” one of his relatives told AFP.
The prime minister suspended the health director for the eastern sector of Baghdad and the head of Ibn Al Khatib, as well as the hospital’s heads of security and technical maintenance teams.
They are being questioned and nobody, Kadhemi said, will be released “until those who have done wrong are brought to justice.”
The UN’S top representative in Iraq, Jeanine Hennis-plasschaert, expressed “shock” at the tragedy and called “for stronger protection measures to ensure that such a disaster cannot reoccur.”
On Wednesday, the number of detected Covid-19 cases in Iraq surpassed one million, the highest of any Arab state.
The health ministry has recorded more than 15,000 deaths since the country’s first infections were reported in February 2020, and has carried out around 40,000 tests daily from a population of 40 million.