‘Horrific fire’ kills at least 61 at Iraq shopping mall

By Erika Solomon and Falih Hassan

A fire ripped through a shopping mall in eastern Iraq and killed at least 61 people, including children, according to local officials, who blamed the scale of the tragedy on shoddy construction and a lack of preparedness.

Iraq’s Interior Ministry said the “horrific fire” began Wednesday night and swept through a recently opened, five-story shopping center in the city of Kut. Most of the 61 victims appeared to have suffocated in heavy smoke, the ministry said in a statement, adding that 14 bodies were so badly charred that they had yet to be identified.

The ministry said it had opened an investigation into the deadly episode in Kut, which is southeast of Baghdad in Wasit province.

According to Habib al-Badri, the head of the province’s security committee, an electrical malfunction sparked the fire. But he said poor building practices and an unprepared rescue service had worsened the casualty toll.

“There was a lack of emergency exits and emergency ladders and extinguishers. And unfortunately the province was not prepared for such an incident,” he said in an interview. “We hope what happened will be a lesson for the future.”

Muntadher Haidar lost his wife and 2-year-old son in the fire. He told a local television channel that he had spoken with his wife when she was trapped inside the mall with their child as flames engulfed the shopping center.

“She said, ‘Forgive me, your son died in my arms, and the fire has reached me, goodbye,’” he told the interviewer, sobbing. “ I couldn’t reach them, I was outside — and I couldn’t.”

“Then the line was cut?” the interviewer asked him. Haidar nodded, saying: “And then the line was cut.”

Some political leaders in Iraq moved quickly to cite the fire as another devastating consequence of pervasive corruption in the country. Many regional analysts argue that corruption is a legacy of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, when money was widely dispersed for construction projects and contracts with poor oversight. And many Iraqis complain that graft has only worsened in the years since. Poorly constructed or unfinished building projects — often attributed to corruption — are common.

Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, Iraq’s prime minister, said in a statement Thursday that the tragedy in Kut was “a form of murder and corruption that is not limited to the embezzlement of funds alone,” but that it “also relates to the laxity and disregard for the technical and administrative procedures required for safety protocols.”