Fire engulfs wedding hall in Iraq
Thousands now mourning at least 100 deaths
BAGHDAD — The bride and groom had just swept onto the dance floor — her dress billowing around her — for the traditional “slow dance” while people lit flares to add excitement to the romantic moment. But the flames shot upward, igniting the decorations draped over the chandeliers and hung from the ceiling, turning a night of celebration into a time of mourning.
Fragments of the flaming decorations dropped onto tables and wedding guests. By the time the fire was out, about 100 people were dead and 150 others injured with severe burns or difficulty breathing from smoke inhalation. Early counts estimated that almost a quarter of the guests were either dead or hurt.
The fire broke out Tuesday night in a wedding hall near the village of Qaraqosh in Hamdaniya, an area about 20 miles southeast of Mosul. Christians have lived in the area for nearly 2,000 years, but fled the Islamic State group in 2014, and only in the last couple of years have begun to return and raise families again in these small Nineveh Plain villages, local officials said.
The toll of those killed and injured was so high, witnesses suggested, because at the moment the blaze began, the lights went out. The guests were unable to see, and stumbled and fell as they rushed toward the main entrance of the wedding hall, Al Haithem, said Nabil Ibrahim, a guest.
When the decorations, which he described as “featherlike things,” burst into flames, he said, “it was like gas being poured on the fire.” The decorations “started falling on people like a volcano and shortly after the power went off,” he said.
“Some people fell under the chairs and they couldn’t get out,” he said. “The only way out was the front door, which is a small door — like 1 meter and half across — and nobody knows about the door of the kitchen.”
That was the door Ibrahim escaped through, helping others out as well, he said. He knew about the kitchen exit only because his son had been married in the same wedding hall, he said.
Another guest, Gorges Yohana, said the fire had moved with astonishing speed. “The roof caught fire within seconds,” he said.
“I helped, like, seven or eight people, but I couldn’t help more because I was choking from the smoke and my eyes were stinging and streaming,” he said.
As the flames intensified, a bulldozer was used to knock openings in the wall, in an attempt to allow people to escape. But the ensuing influx of oxygen may have fed the flames, which then seemed to engulf the entire building as smoke billowed into the air, numerous photos and videos on social media indicate.
Firefighters rushed to the scene, but some onlookers said their hoses had not seemed to work at first.
The district’s mayor, Issam Behnam, said scores of people from Hamdaniya alone had died, including some of his own relatives.
Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani of Iraq called for an investigation into the cause of the fire, and among other steps ordered the Civil Defense Corps to undertake “intensified periodic inspections” of malls, restaurants, event halls, and hotels.
On Wednesday evening, the Kurdish regional government detained the wedding hall’s owner, identified by the Kurdistan Regional Security Council as Samir Sulaiman, in Erbil, where he lives, and handed him over to the Interior Ministry in light of a preliminary report by the Nineveh Governorate’s Civil Defense Force. That report found that “the wedding hall was covered with highly flammable Ecobond panels in violation of safety instructions,” and lacked a sprinkler system.
The Investigations Court in Mosul said that based on its inquiry at the scene, the fire started at 11:30 p.m. Tuesday. While it was set off by the flares, the court said, the fire was exacerbated and raced through the hall because of the “highly flammable fabrics, which caused the ceiling to catch fire.”
The fire hit especially hard in the small Christian communities that dot northern Iraq, said the Reverend Yacoub Saadi of the Mart Shmouni Syriac Orthodox Church in the historically Christian town of Bartella.
“Many of the Christian families returned to their homes during this year or the previous year, and we were very happy for their return,” he said. “But unfortunately it seems like sadness always accompanies us wherever we are.” He spoke as he attended a funeral in Hamdaniya for several friends who died in the fire.
The Islamic State was defeated in Mosul by the end of 2017, but Christians returned slowly, in part because Muslims who had fought the Islamic State had taken up residence, sometimes moving into Christian homes, and many no longer felt entirely safe or welcome.