More than 100 killed after huge fire rips through wedding in Iraq

Witnesses reportedly confirmed the bride and groom both survived the inferno after initial claims they had been among the victims (Picture: INA)

More than 100 people have been killed and at least 150 injured after a huge fire broke out at a Christian wedding celebration in Iraq.

The blaze ripped through a large events hall in the district of Hamdaniya in the north-eastern Nineveh province on Tuesday night.

There has not yet been any official word on the cause, but Kurdish television showed footage of fireworks being let off which then engulfed a chandelier.

Authorities said highly flammable cladding decorating the outside of the venue also contributed to the latest disaster to hit Iraq’s dwindling Christian minority.

Other video on local TV networks showed the bride, named Haneen, and groom, Revan, looking stunned by the sight of their venue going up in flames.

Witnesses reportedly confirmed both survived the inferno after initial claims they had been among the victims.

Father Rudi Saffar Khoury, a priest at the wedding, said it was unclear who was to blame for the fire.

‘It could be a mistake by the event organisers or venue hosts, or maybe a technical error,’ he told The Associated Press. ‘It was a disaster in every sense of the word.’

Soldiers and emergency responders among others gather around ambulances carrying wounded people after a fire broke out at a wedding hall (Picture: AFP via Getty)

In the aftermath, all that was left of the hall was charred metal and debris which could only be seen under the light from survivors’ mobile phones or the TV crews’ cameras.

The music which had greeted the first dance was replaced by the wailing of ambulance sirens as the injured were rushed to nearby hospitals.

Some of those burned included children.

Health officials in Nineveh province raised the death toll to 114, though federal officials did not immediately update their figure of at least 100 killed.

Health Ministry spokesman Saif al-Badr put the number of injured at 150 in that earlier statement carried by the state-run Iraqi News Agency.

‘All efforts are being made to provide relief to those affected by the unfortunate accident,’ al-Badr said.

Ahmed Dubardani, a health official in the province, told Rudaw that many of those injured suffered serious burns.

‘The majority of them were completely burned and some others had 50 to 60% of their bodies burned,’ Dubardani said. ‘This is not good at all. The majority of them were not in good condition.’

At least 100 people died in Iraq and 150 others were injured (Picture: AFP via Getty)

An Iraqi boy receives medical treatment at a local hospital in Hamdaniya (Picture: EPA)

A woman arrives with her arm heavily bandaged (Picture: EPA)

Families mill outside waiting for updates on their loved ones (Picture: Reuters)

Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani ordered an investigation into the fire and asked the country’s Interior and Health officials to provide relief, his office said in a statement online.

Hamdaniya is on Iraq’s Nineveh Plains and under the control of its central government, though it is close to and claimed by Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish regional government.

Masrour Barzani, the prime minister of the Kurdish region, ordered hospitals there to also help those hurt in the blaze.

It wasn’t immediately clear why authorities in Iraq allowed the cladding to be used on the hall, though corruption and mismanagement remains endemic two decades after the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

While some types of cladding can be made with fire-resistant material, experts say those that have caught fire at the wedding hall and elsewhere were not designed to meet stricter safety standards and were often put onto buildings without any breaks to slow or halt a possible blaze.

That includes the 2017 Grenfell Fire in London that killed 72 people in the greatest loss of life in a fire on British soil since World War II, as well as multiple high-rise fires in the United Arab Emirates.

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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, the historic homeland, was wrested back from the Islamic State group six years ago, some towns are still mostly rubble and lack basic services.

Many Christians have left for Europe, Australia or the United States.

The number of Christians in Iraq today is estimated at 150,000, compared to 1.5 million in 2003. Iraq’s total population is more than 40 million.

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