Syrian and photographer are among the deceased
LONDON // An acclaimed photographer and a Syrian refugee have been identified as the first two victims of the tower block fire in London, in which at least 30 people died.
Syrian refugee Mohammed Al Hajali, 23, a civil engineering student who wanted to help rebuild his war-torn homeland, was the first victim identified.
Al Hajali, who lived on the 14th floor, was in his flat with his brother Omar when the fire broke out. The pair were separated during the chaotic evacuation of the building.
The brothers arrived in Britain in 2014. Omar said Mohammed was trapped in the burning block as they tried to flee their flat. Omar, who had thought his brother had escaped, spoke to Mohammed by phone from outside the block as he watched it engulfed in flames and thick black smoke.
“He said ‘Why have you left me?’ He said ‘I’m dying. I cannot breathe’,” Omar said. “We came from Syria to be safe here, and now we’re dying.” Omar cried as he told how firefighters led trapped residents to safety. “They came in the last minute when the fire was in the next room. They said ‘Come, come’. They were pushing us,” he said.
“I couldn’t see anything. They opened the door, the smoke came inside, I saw the fire around me. I thought they were pushing all of us. I couldn’t even see anything, even my fingers, nothing.” When he got outside Omar phoned his brother, still unaware he had not made it out.
“I said ‘Where are you?’. He said ‘ I’m in the flat’. He said ‘No one brought me outside’. I saw the fire in the flat from outside. I was watching the flat – it was burning – and my brother was inside.”
The Syria Solidarity Campaign said Mohammed had tried to call his family in Syria during the fire but could not get connected. He had not seen his family for four years.
“When the fire reached his flat, Mohammed bid his friend and brothers goodbye, saying that the fire had reached him. He asked them to pass on the message to his family in Syria,” said the group. “Mohammed undertook a dangerous journey to flee war and death in Syria, only to meet it here in the UK, in his own home.”
British photographer Khadija Saye, 24, who recently had her work exhibited at the Venice Biennale, was also identified as a victim yesterday.
“May you rest in peace Khadija Saye. God bless your beautiful soul. My heart breaks today. I mourn the tragic loss of a wonderful young woman,” said David Lammy, a parliamentarian who knew her.
Thirty people were confirmed dead in the fire but that number is likely to rise as investigators comb through the wreckage, a process that will take weeks or even months. Up to 600 people lived in the social housing block in more than 120 flats.
Experts said the intensity of Wednesday’s fire at the 24-storey building would make identifying victims very hard because the heat could have destroyed DNA. In the US, 40 per cent of the victims of the 9/11 attacks in New York in 2001 were never identified.