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25-04-2021
BAGHDAD: At least 90 people were killed and more than 110 injured in a fire that broke out in the coronavirus intensive care unit of a Baghdad hospital as public anger erupted demanding the prosecution of high-level Iraqi officials.
The blaze on Sunday at the Ibn al-Khatib Hospital in the Iraqi capital was sparked by an accident that caused an oxygen tank to explode, according to medical sources.
The health ministry announced on Sunday that 90 people were killed and 110 were injured in the blaze, while the Iraqi Human Rights Commission said 28 of the victims were patients who had to be taken off ventilators to escape the flames.
The flames spread quickly, according to civil defence officials, as “the hospital had no fire protection system and false ceilings allowed the flames to spread to highly flammable products”.
In response to the fire, Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhemi suspended Health Minister Hassan al-Tamimi amid angry calls on social media for him to be sacked, as part of a probe that would also include the governor of Baghdad.
The prime minister also declared three days of national mourning, while parliament said it would devote its Monday session to the tragedy.
Patients’ relatives scrambled during the blaze to save their loved ones.
Ahmed Zaki, who was visiting his brother when the fire broke out, described people jumping out of windows as the fire spread quickly throughout the unit equipped to treat COVID-19 patients.
“In the beginning there was an explosion,” he said. “People were jumping … Doctors fell on the cars. Everyone was jumping.”
‘Hold them accountable’
Al-Kadhimi earlier on Sunday fired the director-general of the Baghdad Health Department in the al-Rusafa area, where the hospital is located. He also sacked the director of Ibh al-Khatib Hospital and its director of engineering and maintenance, according to a statement from the health ministry and his office.
After the fire first broke out, al-Khadhimi held an emergency meeting at the headquarters of the Baghdad Operations Command, which coordinates Iraqi security forces, according to a statement on his Twitter account.
In the meeting he said the incident amounted to negligence.
“Negligence in such matters is not a mistake, but a crime for which all negligent parties must bear responsibility,” he said. He gave Iraqi authorities 24 hours to present the results of an investigation.
Iraq’s healthcare system, already ruined by decades of sanctions, war and neglect, has been stretched even further by the coronavirus crisis.
Sources reporting from Baghdad, said the death toll was likely to rise because many of the injured had severe burns.
There were 30 patients and dozens of relatives in the ICU reserved for the capital’s most severe COVID cases at the time the fire started.
Videos on social media showed firefighters trying to extinguish flames at the hospital on the southeastern outskirts of the Iraqi capital, as patients and their relatives tried to flee the building.
At least two doctors at the scene confirmed they believed an oxygen cylinder had caused the flames that raged through the second floor of the hospital. (Int’l News Desk)
