Anger mounts after 92 killed in Iraq Covid hospital fire

Nassiriya - Health, civil defence managers and the hospital's manager had been suspended and arrested.

The death toll from a fire that tore through a coronavirus hospital in southern Iraq rose to 92, health officials said on Tuesday, as authorities faced accusations of negligence from grieving relatives and a doctor who works there.

More than 100 people - patients and visitors - were injured in the blaze on Monday night in Nassiriya, officials said.

An investigation showed the fire began when sparks from faulty wiring spread to an oxygen tank that then exploded, police and civil defence authorities said.

It was Iraq's second such tragedy in three months, and the country's president on Tuesday blamed corruption for both. A statement from the prime minister's office called for national mourning.

Rescue teams were using a heavy crane to remove the charred and melted remains of the part of the city's Al Hussain hospital where Covid-19 patients were being treated, as relatives gathered nearby.

A medic at the hospital, who declined to give his name and whose shift ended a few hours before the fire broke out, said the absence of basic safety measures meant it was an accident in the making.

"The hospital lacks a fire sprinkler system or even a simple fire alarm," he told Reuters.

"We complained many times over the past three months that a tragedy could happen any moment from a cigarette stub but every time we get the same answer from health officials: 'we don't have enough money'."

In April, a similar explosion at a Baghdad Covid-19 hospital killed at least 82 and injured 110.

The head of Iraq's semi-official Human Rights Commission said Monday's blast showed how ineffective safety measures still were in a health system crippled by war and sanctions.

"To have such a tragic incident repeated few months later means that still no (sufficient) measures have been taken to prevent them," Ali Bayati said.

The fact that the hospital had been built with lightweight sandwich panels separating the wards had made the fire spread faster, local civil defence authority head Salah Jabbar said.

Health and civil defence managers in the city and the hospital's manager had been suspended and arrested on Monday on the orders of Prime Minister Mustafa Al Kadhimi, his office said.

Government investigators arrived in Nassiriya on Tuesday morning, according to a statement. Their findings would be announced within a week, Kadhimi's office said.