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Qatar Tribune
4 hours ago
- Qatar Tribune
Death toll in Iraqi mall blaze rises to 61
dpa Baghdad A massive fire at a recently opened shopping mall in the Iraqi city of al-Kut killed 61 people including 14 unidentified charred bodies, the country's Interior Ministry said on Thursday. The blaze erupted overnight at the multi-storey hypermarket in the province of Wasit, around 170 kilometres south-east of Baghdad, trapping shoppers inside the place amid rising flames and heavy smoke, eyewitnesses said. Initially, the death toll was put at 50. In an update, the Interior Ministry said the fire had left 61 people dead, mostly due to choking when trapped inside toilets as a result of the heavy smoke. Civil defence crews were meanwhile able to rescue at least 45 others, according to the ministry. The fire had broken up at a five-storey commercial building comprising a hypermarket and a restaurant that was opened to the public just seven days before the disaster, according to the ministry. Iraq's state news agency INA, citing an unnamed medical source, reported that 63 people were killed and 40 others injured in the fire. Interior Minister Abdel-Amir al-Shammari ordered the formation of a committee to determine the causes of the blaze. The dead included women and children, Wasit Governor Mohammed Jamil al-Miyahi said earlier, according to INA. 'We will not be lenient towards those who directly or indirectly caused this incident,' he said, declaring three days of mourning in the province. Al-Miyahi added that findings of a preliminary investigation into the incident would be made public in 48 hours.
Boston Globe
6 hours ago
- Politics
- Boston Globe
‘Horrific Fire' kills at least 61 at Iraq shopping mall
According to Habib al-Badri, the head of the province's security committee, an electric malfunction sparked the fire. But he said poor building practices and an unprepared rescue service had worsened the casualty toll. Advertisement '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." Advertisement '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. Advertisement 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. This article originally appeared in
NZ Herald
7 hours ago
- Politics
- NZ Herald
Migration fears turn Europe's borderless dreams into traffic nightmares
The checkpoints are beginning to undermine the ideal of free movement in the European Union. In a series of agreements beginning 40 years ago, members of the EU effectively declared they would allow one another's citizens to cross without having to clear border security. But the pacts allow countries to temporarily reimpose border controls 'as a last resort' in the event of a serious threat to national security or public policy. Germany, Poland, Austria, France, Italy and the Netherlands have all cited immigration concerns when reinstating border checks this year. Enhanced checks have stopped 110 migrants per day on average from entering Germany since early May, when the new government, under Chancellor Friedrich Merz, tightened border security procedures, Interior Ministry officials said. That's up from 83 per day in the first four months of the year. The increased checks are snarling traffic and annoying commuters, long-haul truckers and other travellers. They are squeezing, at least temporarily, the tendrils of commerce that have grown between towns like Frankfurt an der Oder, Germany, and Slubice, Poland, which lie on opposite banks of the Oder River. The additional security has spawned protests, often from citizens angry that the Germans are searching cars coming in from their countries. Police union leaders complain checks have diverted officers elsewhere. Dutch citizens acting as vigilantes have stopped cars on their way in from Germany to check them for migrants. In Poland, right-wing groups have vowed to turn back any migrant that Germany rejects at its border. Federal government officials in Germany and elsewhere have embraced the checks. This week, Germany will convene a summit with ministers from Poland, France and elsewhere to discuss plans for stricter migration policies. And immigration enforcement is set to be a key point of discussion when Merz and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer are expected to meet in London today. German officials say their enhanced controls signal to potential migrants that Germany's border enforcement is much stricter, though migration levels have been falling steadily for two years, well before many of the checkpoints were installed. 'The policy shift has begun,' the Interior Minister, Alexander Dobrindt, said in a speech to Parliament last week, in which he claimed credit for plunging migration numbers. 'And it's working.' In the twin cities on the Oder River, many locals disagree. 'We do not have a migration crisis here,' Tomasz Stefański, Slubice's deputy mayor, said in an interview. 'The idea of the EU is really quite shaky at the moment, as is freedom of movement across borders.' The city's migrant population is largely Ukrainian refugees, Stefański said, and few others are attempting to enter or leave via the bridge to Germany. But the heightened checks are stressing economic activity between the towns, according to interviews with shop owners and city officials. Officials from the German Interior Ministry did not respond to questions about the economic effects of border controls. Polish border police monitor traffic crossing from Frankfurt an der Oder, Germany into Slubice, Poland on July 10. Photo / Lena Mucha, the New York Times The bridge is the main cord that connects Slubice and Frankfurt an der Oder, which before the end of World War II were a single German city. After Poland joined the EU's free-movement zone in 2007, officials removed the border installations that had stood on the bridge. The cities grew so economically interwoven that locals now call them 'Slubfurt'. One of the few reminders that the river is a border is the price of cigarettes, which are much cheaper on the Polish side. 'Although they speak two different languages, the cities are like two organisms that have become completely entwined,' said Marek Poznanski, the Polish-born director of a logistics hub on the German side of the river. Stefanski first came to Slubice to attend university on the German side. When he had children, he sent them to day care on the German side, a common practice. Nearly a quarter of Slubice's 16,000 residents commute to Germany to work, and roughly half of the town's income comes from cross-border shopping and services, Stefanski said. Local shops appear to be suffering from the traffic jams caused by border checks. The city says its businesses have lost about 20% in revenue from the checks. Poznanski said controls are eating into his logistics business. His drivers spend hours waiting to cross the border into Poland, so trips that used to take two hours, he said, now take five. On a recent afternoon, Polish soldiers briefly stopped the sedan we were driving, with German licence plates, to check our identification. On the return trip, German border police simply waved the car through. Driving toward Berlin, we passed a line of cars and trucks stretched for kilometres on the other side of the road, stalled by the Polish checks. Germany started patrolling its border with Poland in October 2023, in a previous government's effort to signal it was in control of migration. The checks increased significantly under Merz, who had campaigned on deterring migration. The Merz Government has vowed to turn away asylum-seekers who entered Europe somewhere outside Germany. This past week, Poland followed suit. After weeks of protests by far-right activists along the border, Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland ordered his own checks on the Polish borders with Germany and Lithuania. 'Border controls are a popular political tool for signalling to the population that they are safe,' said Norbert Cyrus, an expert on the German-Polish border region at the European University of Viadrina at Frankfurt an der Oder. 'But in practice,the desired effects cannot actually be proven.' Tusk was spurred to order border checks in part by a group known as Ruch Obrony Granic, the Civic Border Defence Movement. The group's members are both protesters and vigilantes. They have vowed to turn back what they believe to be large numbers of migrants being pushed by German authorities into Poland, citing fabricated news reports and videos circulating online. A handful of them, clad in Day-Glo yellow warning vests, still stood at the crossing in Slubice last week, days after official Polish border guards took their post. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Written by: Jim Tankersley and Christopher F. Schuetze Photographs by: Lena Mucha ©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES
The Independent
8 hours ago
- The Independent
Almost 3,000lbs of cocaine discovered on ship headed for Spain
Almost 3,000lbs (1,300kg) of cocaine was seized on a container ship bound for Málaga, Spanish officials have said. Footage released by Spain 's Interior Ministry on Thursday (17 July) showed authorities intercepting the drugs on the vessel 40 miles from the Bay of Cádiz. Thirty-eight bales of cocaine were seized, and the vessel is being inspected. The Interior Ministry said the operation took place when authorities learned of the movement of a container ship on the Vigo-Málaga route, which they suspected might be carrying the drug. Authorities discovered that the ship had been attacked by stowaways attempting to extract the bales of cocaine from the containers and then unload them onto another vessel.
News18
11 hours ago
- Politics
- News18
Syrian Govt, Druze Minority Leaders Announce New Ceasefire As Israel Continues Strikes
Last Updated: Syria's Druze have reached a ceasefire agreement with the Syrian government in Sweida. As Israel continues to strike, Syrian government officials and leaders in the Druze religious minority announced a renewed ceasefire on Wednesday. The development comes days after the clashes had threatened to unravel the country's postwar political transition and drawn military intervention by powerful neighbor Israel. Following the ceasefire announcement, convoys of government forces began withdrawing from the city of Sweida. However, it was not immediately clear if the agreement, announced by Syria's Interior Ministry and in a video message by a Druze religious leader, would hold. Meanwhile, Israel continued its aggression after the ceasefire announcement. Israeli Airstrikes In Damascus The announcement came after Israel launched rare airstrikes in the heart of Damascus, an escalation in a campaign that it said was intended to defend the Druze and push Islamic militants away from its border. The escalation in Syria began with tit-for-tat kidnappings and attacks between local Sunni Bedouin tribes and Druze armed factions in the southern province of Sweida. Government forces that intervened to restore order clashed with the Druze militias, but also in some cases attacked civilians. The violence appeared to be the most serious threat yet to efforts by Syria's new rulers to consolidate control of the country after a rebel offensive led by Islamist insurgent groups ousted longtime despotic leader Bashar Assad in December, ending a nearly 14-year civil war. Israel has taken an aggressive stance toward Syria's new leaders, saying it doesn't want Islamist militants near its borders. Israeli forces have seized a UN-patrolled buffer zone on Syrian territory along the border with the Golan Heights and launched hundreds of airstrikes on military sites in Syria. (With agency inputs) view comments Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
