Video shot by a bystander outside showed a desperate effort to help those trapped inside, with one man trying to knock through a wall with an excavator.
MOSUL, Iraq — A raging fire seemingly caused by fireworks set off to celebrate a Christian wedding consumed a hall packed with guests in northern Iraq, killing around 100 people and injuring 150 others as authorities warned Wednesday the death toll could still rise.
A destroyed building in the northern Nineveh province in Mosul, Iraq, is pictured Wednesday following a blaze that is believed to have killed at least 100 people.There was no official word on the cause of the blaze, but the Kurdish television news channel Rudaw aired footage showing pyrotechnics shooting flames up from the floor of the event and setting a chandelier aflame.
Extravagant wedding ceremonies are common in Iraq, like many countries in the Middle East. Families often invite hundreds of relatives and members of the broader community, spending heavily on spectacular ceremonies with elaborately decorated halls, music and entertainers, often including pyrotechnics.People gather around a truck carrying body bags outside of a hospital in Al-Hamdaniyah, Iraq, on Wednesday.
Ahmed Dubardani, a health official in the province, told Rudaw that many of those injured suffered serious burns.Bodies of people killed in the fire are seen in an event hall in Qaraqosh, also known as Hamdaniyah, on Wednesday.“The majority of them were completely burned and some others had 50 to 60% of their bodies burned,” Dubardani said.
Over the past two decades, Iraq’s Christian minority has been violently targeted by extremists first from al-Qaida and then the Islamic State militant group. Although the Nineveh Plains, their historic homeland, was wrested back from the Islamic State group six years ago, some towns are still mostly rubble and lack basic services, and many Christians have left for Europe, Australia or the United States.
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