Fire kills 82 at Iraqi Covid hospital, health minister suspended

More than 80 people died Sunday in a fire that ripped through an Iraqi Covid-19 hospital, sparking anger and prompting the suspension of top officials in a country with long-dilapidated health infrastructure. 

Many of the victims were on respirators and were suffocated or burned in the smoke and flames when the blaze, at eastern Baghdad's Ibn al-Khatib hospital, started with an explosion caused by "a fault in the storage of oxygen cylinders", medical sources said.

The blaze spread quickly across multiple floors in the middle of the night, as dozens of relatives were at the bedsides of the 30 patients in the hospital's intensive care unit where the most severe Covid-19 cases are treated, a medical source said.

"We saw a fire and were not able to save the patients," he told AFP, tears in his eyes, from Najaf, south of Baghdad, where he had taken his father's body for burial on Sunday.

According to Iraq's civil defence services, "the hospital had no fire protection system and false ceilings allowed the flames to spread to highly flammable products."

- Negligence -

The fire triggered outrage on social media, with a hashtag demanding the health minister be sacked trending on Twitter.

Witnesses said the evacuation of the hospital was slow and chaotic, with patients and their relatives crammed into stairwells as they scrambled for exits.

"It was the people (civilians) who got the wounded out," Amir, 35, told AFP, saying he saved his hospitalised brothers "by the skin of his teeth".

But many also said negligence and endemic corruption were to blame for the deadly inferno.

The Iraqi Human Rights Commission denounced a "crime against patients exhausted by Covid-19 who put their lives in the hands of the health ministry and its institutions."

Witnesses and doctors told AFP many bodies had yet to be identified, the remains too charred by the intense flames.

One of the victims, Ali Ibrahim, 52, had been treated for coronavirus at the Ibn al-Khatib hospital and was buried by his family on Sunday at Zaafaraniya, a neighbourhood near the hospital.

Kadhemi also suspended the head of the health department in eastern Baghdad, the hospital director as well as those in charge of security and maintenance at the medical facility.

The UN's top representative in Iraq, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, expressed "shock" at the tragedy and called "for stronger protection measures to ensure that such a disaster cannot reoccur".

On Wednesday, the number of detected Covid-19 cases in Iraq surpassed one million, the highest of any Arab state.

Iraq rolled out its vaccination campaign last month and has received nearly 650,000 doses of different vaccines -- the majority by donation or through the Covax scheme for low and middle income nations.