‘Horrific Fire' kills at least 61 at Iraq shopping mall
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'There was a lack of emergency exits and emergency ladders and extinguishers. And unfortunately the province was not prepared for such an incident,' he said in an interview. 'We hope what happened will be a lesson for the future.'
Muntadher Haidar lost his wife and 2-year-old son in the fire. He told a local television channel that he had spoken with his wife when she was trapped inside the mall with their child as flames engulfed the shopping center.
'She said, 'Forgive me, your son died in my arms, and the fire has reached me, goodbye,'' he told the interviewer, sobbing. " I couldn't reach them, I was outside — and I couldn't."
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'Then the line was cut?' the interviewer asked him. Haidar nodded, saying: 'And then the line was cut.'
Some political leaders in Iraq moved quickly to cite the fire as another devastating consequence of pervasive corruption in the country. Many regional analysts argue that corruption is a legacy of the US occupation of Iraq, when money was widely dispersed for construction projects and contracts with poor oversight. And many Iraqis complain that graft has only worsened in the years since. Poorly constructed or unfinished building projects — often attributed to corruption — are common.
Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, Iraq's prime minister, said in a statement Thursday that the tragedy in Kut was 'a form of murder and corruption that is not limited to the embezzlement of funds alone,' but that it 'also relates to the laxity and disregard for the technical and administrative procedures required for safety protocols.'
Muqtada al-Sadr, an influential Shiite cleric and political leader in Iraq, offered condolences in a separate statement. 'This tragedy adds to the tragedies and suffering of the Iraqi people as a result of so many forms of corruption and repeated neglect,' he said.
The country's commission of federal integrity, an independent body that deals with government accountability, highlighted what it said were shortcomings in the initial response to the fire by the Interior Ministry's rescue services, saying in a statement that it would also investigate the blaze.
Iraq's prime minister announced three days of mourning, and the governor of Wasit province, Mohammad al-Mayahy, said he would pursue legal action against the mall's owners.
'We will not show leniency toward those who were directly or indirectly responsible for this incident, which is surrounded by suspicious circumstances,' the governor said.
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It was not immediately clear who owned the building. Video footage from the aftermath, verified by The New York Times, showed the building covered in ash that blanketed larger pieces of debris. By Thursday afternoon, some families of the victims had taken their dead to the city of Najaf, home to the 'Valley of Peace' cemetery where many members of Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority seek to be buried.
Hussein Faiq, a student at the University of Kut, said he lost six relatives in the blaze. The youngest victims were 3 and 4 years old, he said, and the oldest were his grandparents, who were in their 50s. 'One of the bodies was burned, but the rest died from suffocation,' he said.
The fire at the mall is the latest in a list of deadly blazes in Iraq in recent years that have raised questions about safety protocols and preparedness.
In 2023, more than 100 people were killed when a blaze tore through a wedding hall. In 2021, two separate fires at hospitals that were treating COVID patients killed at least 174 people.
In both cases, investigators found that the buildings had failed to adhere to basic safety standards. The wedding hall, which contained highly flammable material, lacked fire exits or extinguishers. And the front door of one of the hospital wards was padlocked, fire trucks ran out of water, and sprinklers malfunctioned.
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