A fire at a wedding hall in Iraq kills at least 100 and injures 150 more
BAGHDAD — A fire at a wedding hall in northern Iraq killed at least 100 people and injured 150 others, authorities said Wednesday.
The fire happened in Iraq’s Nineveh province in its Hamdaniya area, authorities said. That’s a predominantly Christian area just outside of the northern city of Mosul, about 200 miles northwest of the capital, Baghdad.
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.
Television footage showed charred debris inside the wedding hall as a man shouted at firefighters.
Health Ministry spokesman Saif Badr gave the casualty figure via the state-run Iraqi News Agency.
Ethnic Armenians are fleeing Nagorno-Karabakh over the border to Armenia, as Azerbaijan asserts full control over the enclave Armenians call Artsakh.
“All efforts are being made to provide relief to those affected by the unfortunate accident,” Badr said.
Najim 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.
For much of the world, Iraq is a distant tragedy. But for its children raised amid chaos and war, that legacy has defined their generation.
With no accountability in sight for dams’ collapses and deadly floods in Libya, sorrow for the dead turns to rage over corruption and political chaos.
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