On the 24th local time, a fire broke out in a hospital in Baghdad, Iraq, killing dozens of people, including patients and their families.
According to the state-run INA news agency, the Iraqi Ministry of Interior announced in a statement issued today that 82 people were killed and 110 were injured in a fire at Ibn Alhativ Hospital in southeastern Baghdad.
An official from the Ministry of Home Affairs told the EFE news agency that "fires from explosions occurred in hospitals where COVID-19 patients were treated, and most of the deaths were suffocated."
The hospital that caught fire on this day was a place where severely ill patients with Corona 19 were treated in the intensive care unit.
An official from the Iraqi Civil Defense Forces said, "a fire started in an intensive care unit with a patient with breathing difficulties and rescued 90 of the 120 patients in the hospital, but many died."
An official of the Civil Defense Force explained, "Most of the dead were suffocated by drinking smoke after removing the ventilator during the evacuation process."
The Ministry of Health explained that more than 200 people were rescued from the fired building, but many died.
The Iraqi government said on an official Twitter account today that Prime Minister Mustafa Al Qadhimi ordered the Ministry of Health to investigate the cause of the accident.
Prime Minister Al-Kadhimi dismissed executives such as the head of the hospital in which the fire occurred, and declared a special mourning period for three days from that day.
The cause of the fire is presumed to be an explosion in the oxygen tank.
One patient family testified that "there was an explosion in the first place, and then the flames quickly spread throughout the hospital."
The AFP news agency cited an anonymous medical source and said it was "a fire caused by careless management of the oxygen tank."
(Photo = EPA, Yonhap News)