Iraq: Fire at Covid hospital, death toll rises to 82

Fire in a coronavirus intensive care unit claimed dozens of lives in Iraq on Sunday. The death toll rose to 82by afternoon. The fire started in the Baghdad hospital due to "a fault in the storage of Oxygen cylinders", as per medical sources quoted by AFP.

According to civil defence, the fire spread quickly as " "the hospital had no fire protection system and false ceilings allowed the flames to spread to highly flammable products"

Iraq's hospitals have been worn down by decades of conflict and poor investment, with shortages in medicines and hospital beds.

The latest fire at the hospital sparked outrage on social media. The prime minister has called for an investigation.

In the middle of the night, as dozens of relatives were at the bedsides of the 30 patients in the intensive care unit at Ibn al-Khatib hospital -- reserved for the most severe Covid-19 cases in Baghdad -- flames spread across multiple floors, another medical source said.

Social media videos showed firefighters fighting the flames as patients and their relatives tried to flee.

"The majority of the victims died because they had to be moved and were taken off ventilators, while the others were suffocated by the smoke," the civil defence said.

It told Iraqi state news its members had "rescued 90 people out of 120 patients and their relatives" at the scene, but could not give an exact number of the dead and wounded.

Medical and security sources told AFP that 23 people had been killed and some fifty others injured in the blaze.

Negligence

The fire -- which according to several sources was caused by negligence, often linked to endemic corruption in Iraq -- immediately sparked anger on social media in the country, with a hashtag demanding the health minister be sacked trending on Twitter.

Baghdad Governor Mohammed Jaber called on the health ministry "to establish a commission of enquiry so that those who did not do their jobs may be brought to justice".

In a statement, the government's human rights commission said the incident was "a crime against patients exhausted by Covid-19 who put their lives in the hands of the health ministry and its institutions and instead of being treated, perished in flames".

The commission called on Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhemi to fire Health Minister Hassan al-Tamimi and "bring him to justice".

Kadhemi responded by calling for "an immediate investigation with those in charge at the ministry" and demanded that the "hospital director, head of security and the technical maintenance team be sent to the investigators and not be released until those at fault have been brought to justice".

(With inputs from agencies)