A raging fire seemingly caused by fireworks set off to celebrate a Christian wedding consumed a hall packed with guests in northern Iraq, killing at least 100 people and injuring 150 others as authorities warned Wednesday the death toll could still rise.
Authorities said that flammable building materials also contributed to the latest disaster to hit Iraq`s dwindling Christian minority. The fire happened in the Hamdaniya area of Iraq`s Nineveh province, authorities said. There was no official word on the cause of the blaze, but the Kurdish television news channel Rudaw aired footage showing fireworks shooting up from the floor of the event and setting a chandelier aflame.
Civil defense officials quoted by the Iraqi News Agency described the wedding hall's exterior as decorated with highly flammable cladding that is illegal in the country.
“The fire led to the collapse of parts of the hall as a result of the use of highly flammable, low-cost building materials that collapse within minutes when the fire breaks out,” civil defense said. “They were about to do a slow dance, and then they lit up this thing for the dance, which caught fire," one injured woman told Rudaw from a hospital gurney.
Another man injured in the fire at the hospital similarly told Rudaw that the blaze started as the couple prepared for their slow dance. Health officials in Nineveh province raised the death toll to 114, though federal officials did not immediately update their figure of at least 100 killed.
Ahmed Dubardani, a health official in the province, told Rudaw that many of those injured suffered serious burns. Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani ordered an investigation into the fire and asked the country's interior and health officials to provide relief, his office said in a statement online.
Najim al-Jubouri, the provincial governor of Nineveh, said some of the injured had been transferred to regional hospitals. Masrour Barzani, the prime minister of the Kurdish region, ordered hospitals there to also help those hurt in the blaze.
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