Others are still missing, according to the Iraqi News Agency. The Corniche Hypermarket Mall — a five-story shopping centre that had opened only a week earlier — got fully engulfed in flames
Corniche Hypermarket Mall in the eastern Iraqi city of Kut after the fire, on Thursday. PIC/AFP
A fire engulfed a newly opened shopping centre in eastern Iraq, killing more than 60 people, including children, Iraqi officials said on Thursday. Civil defence teams rescued more than 45 people who became trapped when the fire broke out late on Wednesday in the city of Kut, the Interior Ministry said in a statement. Others are still missing, according to the Iraqi News Agency. The Corniche Hypermarket Mall — a five-story shopping centre that had opened only a week earlier — got 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 fuelled 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 centre fire, most of them from suffocation. Among the dead were 14 charred bodies that remain unidentified, it said. Provincial Gov Mohammed al-Mayyeh declared three days of mourning. He said the cause of the fire is under investigation and that cases were filed against the building owner and shopping centre owner.
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