An Iraqi covid hospital fire has killed at least 82 people and left 110 injured.
The fire was caused by an exploding oxygen tank at Ibn Khatib hospital in Iraq’s capital city, Baghdad.
About “30 patients were in the intensive care unit”, which was reserved for the most severe cases of Covid, a hospital source told the AFP news agency.
Emergency service officials said many patients died when they were taken off oxygen machines to be evacuated, while others were suffocated by smoke.
A fire that ravaged a Covid-19 hospital in Iraq’s capital Bagdad has left at least 82 people dead and 110 injured pic.twitter.com/XAjjPmoYqt
— TRT World (@trtworld) April 25, 2021
The Iraqi Prime Minister suspended the health minister over the fire.
The Iraqi PM referred the health minister to authorities for investigation.
The head of Iraq’s Civil Defence, Gen Kadhim Bohan, said the fire had broken out in the hospital’s intensive-care unit.
In a statement, the government’s human rights commission said the incident was “a crime against patients exhausted by Covid-19”.
“Once the fire started somebody needed to put the auto central pipes off, which means basically cutting the oxygen from those who need it most,” Halla Sarraf, the director of Iraqi Health Access, a non-governmental organisation, told the BBC.
The fire adds strain as Iraq passes the one-million mark of Covid infections this week.
Iraq’s hospitals have been pushed to the limit during the coronavirus pandemic, adding to the strains wrought by years of war, neglect and corruption.
Covid infections have been rising steeply since February in Iraq, and the total passed the one-million mark this week.
The health ministry has recorded 1,025,288 cases and 15,217 deaths since the pandemic began.
The country launched its vaccination campaign last month, and has received nearly 650,000 doses, most of which have come from Covax, a global programme for sharing jabs.
