Iraqi hospital fire kills at least 82 people
BAGHDAD — The death toll from a fire at a Baghdad hospital for coronavirus patients rose to at least 82 Sunday as anxious families searched for missing relatives and the government suspended key health officials for alleged negligence.
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 Saturday night blaze, which also injured 110 people, was set off by an exploding oxygen cylinder.
Widespread negligence on the part of health officials is to blame for the fire, Iraq’s prime minister, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, said Sunday. 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 defense teams until early 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 nurse Maher Ahmed said forensics teams will attempt to identify them by matching DNA samples to relatives.
By midday 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 after 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.”
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.
Years of sanctions and war have crippled the country’s health sector, and the latest infection wave has tested the limits of health facilities. Security concerns also plague the country as frequent rocket attacks continue to target army bases hosting foreign troops and the seat of Iraq’s government.
The deadly fire was only the latest chapter in Iraq’s poor record for public safety.
In March 2019, over 100 people died when a ferry capsized on the Tigris River near the northern city of Mosul. The boat overturned due to overcrowding and high water. A few months later, in September 2019, a fire ripped through Baghdad’s Shorja market, a major commercial area in the city, burning many shops to the ground.
The prime minster convened the special Cabinet session hours after 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 matters is not a mistake, but a crime for which all negligent parties must bear responsibility,” al-Kadhimi said Sunday after a meeting.