92 dead in Iraq COVID Ward fire

On Jul 14, 2021

IRAQ: Grief and anger gripped the Iraqi city of Nasiriyah on Tuesday after fire swept through a Covid isolation unit killing 92 people and wounding dozens more.

The devastating Monday evening blaze in the city’s Al-Hussein Hospital, which medics said was fuelled by the explosion of oxygen canisters, was the second such fire in Iraq in three months.

“Sixty-four (bodies) were retrieved and 39 identified and handed over to their families,” a source at the provincial forensic science department said. “Medical teams and relatives of victims are finding it difficult to identify the rest of the corpses,” the source said, adding that the death count might rise with more bodies feared buried under the rubble. A hundred people were also wounded in the blaze. Between January and March alone, the interior ministry recorded 7,000 fires. Iraq has recorded more than 1.4 million coronavirus cases and more than 17,000 deaths.

– BBC