On Monday, a fire broke out inside an isolation center for people infected with the Coronavirus at Al-Hussein Hospital in the city of Nasiriyah in Dhi Qar Governorate, in an accident that is the second of its kind that occurs in a health institution within one day.
The Dhi Qar Health Directorate reported the death of “at least 36 people in the fire and the injury of five others,” according to the directorate’s spokesperson, Ammar Al-Zamili, to the Iraqi News Agency, “Waa’.”
Al-Zamili confirmed that the directorate declared a “state of emergency.”
Videos spread showing the fire in the hospital’s Purity Center, and firefighting teams gathered, trying to put it out:
The Security Media Cell quoted the Ministry of Interior in a tweet as saying that “Civil Defense teams controlled a fire incident that broke out inside 20 caravans built of sandwich panels, dedicated to isolating people infected with Coronavirus in Al Hussein Teaching Hospital in Dhi Qar Governorate, and preventing the spread of fire to the hospital building, where it was recorded. There were human casualties between death and injuries as a result of this accident.”
وزارة الداخلية : فرق الدفاع المدني تسيطر على حادث حريق اندلع داخل 20 كرفان مشيداً من السندويج بنل سريع الاشتعال مخصصة لعزل المصابين بفايروس كورونا في…
— خلية الإعلام الأمني🇮🇶 (@SecMedCell) July 12, 2021
Sandwich panel for construction consists of insulating foam materials sandwiched between two layers of sheet or aluminum.
According to the Iraqi Ministry of Health, the civil defense team was able to put out another fire that broke out, Monday, in “a number of departments of the Ministry of Health headquarters” located in the Medical City in Bab Al-Moadham area in central Baghdad, and the ministry said that “the fire was controlled without injuries.”
On the same day, the Iraqi Civil Defense forces put out a fire that broke out in a factory for the manufacture of sponge granules south of Baghdad, while another fire broke out in the “Al-Oula Market” area of Al-Sadr City, also east of Baghdad.
Fires are almost a daily scene in the country, as the Ministry of Interior recorded between last January and March 7,000 fires, the deadliest of which broke out last April in Ibn Al-Khatib Hospital designated for Covid-19 patients in the capital, Baghdad.
82 people were killed and 110 others were injured in this accident, which sparked shock and outrage.
According to Civil Defense spokesman, Brigadier General Jawdat Abdel Rahman, who was speaking to AFP, “Baghdad is the most exposed city to fires in Iraq, with 40 percent of the country’s fires recorded. 2,800 fires were counted in it during the first three months of 2021.”
