More than 80 people died on Sunday after a fire ripped through a Baghdad hospital for COVID-19 patients, sparking outrage and the suspension of top officials overseeing Iraq’s crumbling health services.
The blaze at eastern Baghdad’s Ibn al-Khatib hospital began when badly stored oxygen cylinders blew up, medics said.
Many of the victims were on respirators and were burned or suffocated in the resulting inferno.
“It took just three minutes for the fire to reach most floors” of the hospital, the fire service said.
The health ministry said 82 people were killed and 110 wounded, while Iraqi Human Rights Commission said 28 of the victims were patients who had to be taken off ventilators to escape the flames.
The blaze tore across multiple floors in the middle of the night, as dozens of relatives were visiting patients in the intensive care unit, a medical source said.
Bakr Qazem, son of one the victims, said he was at the hospital when he felt “a strong explosion”.
“We saw a fire and were not able to save the patients,” he told AFP tearfully from Najaf, Shiite holy city where he had taken his father’s body for burial.
Throughout the day, funeral processions filled the city, where the vast majority of Iraq’s Shiites are buried.
According to Iraq’s fire service;
The hospital had no fire protection system and false ceilings allowed the flames to spread to highly flammable products.
It added that firefighters had been late reaching the hospital, in the remote outskirts of Baghdad.
Following this, Prime Minister, Mustafa al-Kadhemi suspended Health Minister, Hassan al-Tamimi — who is backed by the powerful Shiite leader, Moqtada Sadr — as part of a probe also including the governor of Baghdad.
The fire triggered outrage on social media, with a widespread hashtag demanding the health minister be sacked.
Hezbollah Brigades, one of Iraq’s most radical pro-Iran factions, on Sunday evening demanded that the government quit.
Kadhemi, in a tweet, urged Iraqis “to be united in solidarity and to refrain from playing politics with this national catastrophe.”
He has also declared three days of national mourning and put aside 10 million dinars (around $6,900) for the family of each victim.
Witnesses said the evacuation of the hospital was slow and chaotic, with patients and their relatives crammed into stairwells as they scrambled for exits.
“It was the people (civilians) who got the wounded out,” Amir, 35, told AFP, saying he had narrowly saved his hospitalised brothers.
Meanwhile, last Wednesday, the number of detected COVID–19 cases in Iraq topped one million, the highest of any Arab state.
The health ministry has recorded more than 15,000 deaths since the pandemic broke out last year, from a population of 40 million.
Iraq launched its vaccination campaign last month and has received nearly 650,000 vaccine doses, the majority by donation or through the Covax scheme for less wealthy nations.
Around 300,000 people have received at least one dose as at Sunday, the ministry said.
Via AFP.
