A fire at a shopping center in eastern Iraq kills more than 60 people

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BAGHDAD (AP) — A fire engulfed a newly opened shopping center in eastern Iraq, killing more than 60 people, including children, Iraqi officials said Thursday.

Civil defence teams rescued more than 45 people who became trapped when the fire broke out late Wednesday in the city of Kut, the Interior Ministry said in a statement. Others are still missing, according to the state-run Iraqi News Agency.

Photographs and videos on local media showed the Corniche Hypermarket Mall, a five-story shopping center that had opened only a week earlier, fully engulfed in flames.

Poor building standards have often contributed to tragic fires in Iraq. In July 2021, a blaze at a hospital in the Iraqi city of Nasiriyah that killed between 60 to 92 people was determined to have been fueled by highly flammable, low-cost type of “sandwich panel” cladding that is illegal in Iraq.

In 2023, more than 100 people died in a fire at a wedding hall in the predominantly Christian area of Hamdaniya in Nineveh province after the ceiling panels above a pyrotechnic machine burst into flames..

Iraq’s Ministry of Interior said in a statement that 61 people died in the shopping center fire, most of them from suffocation. Among the dead were 14 charred bodies that remain unidentified, it said.

Provincial Gov. Mohammed al-Mayyeh in a statement declared three days of mourning. He said the cause of the fire is under investigation but that legal cases were filed against the building owner and shopping center owner. He did not specify what the charges were.

“We assure the families of the innocent victims that we will not be lenient with those who were directly or indirectly responsible for this incident,” al-Mayyeh said.

The results of the preliminary investigation will be released within 48 hours, he said.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al-Sudani said in a statement that he had directed the interior minister to go to the site of the fire to investigate and take measures to prevent a recurrence.