People gather at the site following a fatal fire at a wedding celebration, in the district of Hamdaniya in Iraq‘s Nineveh province
| Photo Credit: Reuters

A fire that raced through a hall hosting a Christian wedding in northern Iraq killed at least 100 people and injured 150 others, authorities said Wednesday, warning the death toll could rise higher.

The fire happened in Iraq’s Nineveh province in its Hamdaniya area, authorities said. That’s a predominantly Christian area just outside of the city of Mosul, some 335 kilometres (205 miles) northwest of the capital, Baghdad.

Television footage showed flames rushing over the wedding hall as the fire took hold. In the blaze’s aftermath, only charred metal and debris could be seen as people walked through the scene of the fire, the only light coming from television cameras and the lights of onlookers’ mobile phones.

Survivors arrived at local hospitals, receiving oxygen and bandaged, as their families milled through hallways and outside as workers organised more oxygen cylinders.

Health Ministry spokesman Saif al-Badr gave the casualty figure via the state-run Iraqi News Agency.

“All efforts are being made to provide relief to those affected by the unfortunate accident,” Mr. al-Badr said.

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. He cautioned there were no final casualty figures yet from the blaze, which suggests the death toll still may rise.

There was no immediate official word on the cause of the blaze but initial reports by the Kurdish television news channel Rudaw suggested fireworks at the venue may have sparked the fire.

Civil defence officials quoted by the Iraqi News Agency described the wedding hall’s exterior as being decorated with highly flammable cladding that were 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 defence said.

It wasn’t immediately clear why authorities in Iraq allowed the cladding to be used on the hall, though corruption and mismanagement remains endemic two decades after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

While some types of cladding can be made with fire-resistant material, experts say those that have caught fire at the wedding hall and elsewhere weren’t designed to meet stricter safety standards and often were put onto buildings without any breaks to slow or halt a possible blaze. That includes the 2017 Grenfell Fire in London that killed 72 people in the greatest loss of life in a fire on British soil since World War II, as well as multiple high-rise fires in the United Arab Emirates.

The fire was the latest disaster to strike Iraq’s shrinking Christian minority, which over the past two decades has been violently targeted by extremists first from al-Qaida and then the Islamic State militant group. Although the Nineveh plains, the historic homeland, was wrested back from the Islamic State group six years ago, some towns are still mostly rubble and lack basic services. Many Christians have left for Europe, Australia or the United States.

The number of Christians in Iraq today is estimated at 150,000, compared to 1.5 million in 2003. Iraq’s total population is more than 40 million.

Smoke rises from the Iraqi Kurdistan headquarters of the Kurdish Democratic Birthday party of Iran, later Iran’s Modern Guards’ accident at the outskirts of Kirkuk, Iraq September 28, 2022.
| Picture Credit score: Reuters

Iran and Iraq have reached an commitment to disarm participants of Iranian Kurdish dissident teams primarily based in northern Iraq and relocate their participants from their wave bases, officers from the 2 nations stated on August 28.

Nasser Kanaani, the spokesman for Iran’s Overseas Ministry, stated in a information briefing on August 28 that the Iraqi executive had assuredly “to disarm the armed terrorist groups stationed in Iraq’s territory by September 19, and then, evacuate and transfer them from their military bases to camps designated by the Iraqi government.”

He added that the cut-off date would now not be prolonged and that time family members between the 2 nations are “entirely friendly and warm … the presence of terrorists in the northern region of Iraq is an unpleasant stain on mutual ties.”

Iran has periodically introduced moves focused on participants of the Kurdistan Democratic Birthday party in Iran, or KDPI, and alternative Iranian Kurdish dissident teams primarily based in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish area akin the border with Iran.

An Iraqi executive reliable, who spoke on situation of anonymity as a result of he used to be now not licensed to talk to the media, showed the commitment used to be signed between the 2 nations and stated the central executive in Baghdad is “working as quickly as possible” to relocate the teams with the benevolence of government from the Kurdish regional executive in Irbil and Sulaimaniyah.

He declined to provide the precise location to which the disarmed militants could be moved, however stated it’ll be throughout the Iraqi Kurdish area. He stated they “will have a camp to live in and will be without arms.”

Other Iranian dissident teams in Iraq are aligned with each and every of the 2 primary Iraqi Kurdish events – the Kurdistan Democratic Birthday party, with its seat of energy in Irbil, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan birthday celebration, whose stronghold is in Suleimaniyah – and are at odds with each and every alternative in addition to with Iran.

“Previously Sulaimaniyah would accuse Irbil of working with these groups, and Erbil would accuse Sulaimaniyah of working with them, but as a central government we agreed to relocate them,” the Iraqi reliable stated. “We are trying as hard as possible for this to take place on Sept. 19.”

Iraqi High Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani got here to energy utmost month by the use of a coalition of Iranian-backed events and is clear as near to Iran, despite the fact that he has additionally tried to assemble ties with america and Turkey.