At minimum of 41 people have been killed in a hospital fire in Nasiriya – the southeastern Iraqi city, an additional at least at least 5 people are reported to be critically injured.
The spokesperson for the local health department, Dr. Ammar al-Zamili, indicated that the fire on Monday night, July 12, may have started after oxygen tanks exploded in an ICU treating Covid-19 patients.
“The civil defense teams managed to control and put out the major fire that broke out at al-Hussein hospital in the city with the help of health workers and neighborhood volunteers,” al-Zamili told CNN.
Healthcare officials did not say how many people were inside the hospital building when the fire broke out but said an evacuation operation is underway. Al-Hussein Hospital was set up to treat Covid-19 patients at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak and has quarantine stations on site.
In April another Covid-19 treatment center in Baghdad was also engulfed in fire originating from the explosion of oxygen tanks.
Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, Iraqi Prime Minister, will hold an emergency meeting with a number of ministers as well as security commanders “to find out the causes and repercussions” of the deadly fire, the PM’s office said Tuesday morning, July 13.
Mohammed al-Halbousi, speaker of Iraq parliament, tweeted that the fire shows a failure to protect lives “and it is time to put an end to this catastrophic failure, and Parliament will shift today’s session to examine options regarding what happened.”
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