Sadness and anger gripped the Iraqi city of Nasiriyah on Tuesday after a fire swept through a Covid isolation unit killing 64 people and wounding dozens more.
The devastating Monday evening blaze in the city’s Al-Hussein Hospital, which medics said was fuelled by the explosion of oxygen canisters, was the second such fire in Iraq in three months.
“Sixty-four (bodies) were retrieved and 39 identified and handed over to their families,” a source at the provincial forensic science department told AFP.
“Medical teams and relatives of victims are finding it difficult to identify the rest of the corpses,” the source said, adding that the death toll might rise with more bodies feared buried under the rubble.
A hundred people were also wounded in the blaze.
On Tuesday, as the first of the funerals were held, angry protesters gathered to vent their anger at provincial authorities they hold responsible for the deaths, an AFP correspondent said.
In Al-Dawaya, east of Nasiriyah, a joint funeral was held for six members of one family who died in the inferno.
In Al-Nasr, north of the city, a joint funeral was held with two brothers and two sisters, who were among the dead.
Abbas Agil, a pensioner who attended the funeral in Al-Nasr, said the shouts of grieving mourners were filled with rage at provincial officials they accuse of corruption and neglect.
AFP
