60 Killed in Massive Fire at lraq Shopping Mall; Cause Still Unknown

The blaze that broke out in a new mall in the eastern province of Wasit, the Iraqi Interior Ministry said on Thursday more than 60 people including women and children had died. The statement issued by Iraqs Ministry of Interior said that 61 people burnt to death the majority of them unable to breathe because of the fire that erupted late Wednesday in the city of Kut.

It said that among the dead included 14 burnt bodies whose identities have not been ascertained yet. According to the statement, more than 45 trapped in the building were saved by civil defence teams.

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The mal was a five-story building that had a five-storied restaurant cum supermarket where the mall opened barely a week ago. According to state-owned Iraq News Agency, people were still missing. Local media displayed photos and video clips of a building entirely surrounded in flames. Gov Mohammed al-Mayyeh in a statement announced three days of mourning in the province.

According to him, the cause of the fire is still being investigated but the building owner and the mall owner had been subjected to legal cases. He failed to indicate the nature of charges.

“We assure the families of the innocent victims that we will not be lenient with those who were directly or indirectly responsible for this incident,” al-Mayyeh said. The findings of the initial enquiry will be published within 48 hours he added.

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According to a statement by Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al-Sudani, he had ordered the interior minister to visit the area where the fire broke so as to investigate the cause of such an incident and ensure no such thing happens again. Iraqi buildings have been poorly constructed and this has usually triggered disastrous fires.

A July 2021 hospital fire in the Iraqi city of Nasiriyah, killing between 60 to 92 persons, was found to have been supported by very flammable but low-cost type of the so-called sandwich panel, which cannot be used in Iraq due to its illegality. In 2023, the ceiling panels above a pyrotechnic machine at a wedding hall in the largely Christian neighborhood of Hamdaniya in Nineveh province caught fire, killing over 100 people.

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