Mosul residents watched in horror on Thursday as a ferry carrying close to 200 people including women and children capsized in the river causing outrage and anger across the country. People use the ferry to visit an island in the Tigris to relax, paying 1,000 Iraqi dinars ($0.84) one way.
“Get out get out, all of you are bastards,” a group of angry residents chanted when Salih arrived in the city on Friday to visit the injured and those impacted. Pushed and shoved, President Salih refused to leave the scene and at one point tried to calm the raucous crowd by joining and holding a sign which read “No to the corrupt.”
Crowds pressed in on the president. "I am from Mosul and want to talk to you. All the people of Mosul have sunk. We did not sleep yesterday. All families are crying. I feel like my son has drowned in front of me. We have all sunk,” a man told the president.
Others welcomed his visit to Mosul.
One man asked Salih to recognize the dead as “martyrs,” a designation that would give the surviving family members a government pension.
"I talk to you from my heart. The Mosul tragedy is a national one. All Iraqis are with Mosul,” the president told the crowd.
He said the tragedy did not come out of nowhere, but was a result of "mismanagement, greed, corruption, and negligence."
The spokesperson for the Iraqi health ministry, Dr. Saif al-Badr, confirmed to Rudaw English via WhatsApp that 91 people were confirmed dead as of noon on Friday. The deputy head of health in Nineveh province Dr. Ahmad Dubardani put the number at 90 but said that at least 112 people were still missing.
“As far south as Hamam al-Aleel and Qayyarah, search teams are looking for bodies of the victims,” Dubardani told Rudaw via telephone referring to the areas south of Mosul city on river Tigris.
Salih was not harmed in the incident but at one point the presidential guards and other security forces pushed him into a vehicle.
The president had visited the site in the company of Nineveh Governor Nawfal Hamadi. Their departing motorcade was pelted with stones, with anger directed at the governor. People used rocks to smash windows of an SUV of the governor.
A video shared online showed people preventing the governor from exiting his vehicle as the crowd chanted “Corrupt! Corrupt!”
They plastered his windshield with banners carrying statements like, “We demand the prosecution of the negligent.”
“May Allah curse you,” one protester shouted at the governor.
A very unpopular politician, Hamadi has been accused of corruption by a parliamentary committee. It is expected he will be sacked.
The president later joined Parliamentary Speaker Mohammed al-Halbousi for a joint press conference in Mosul.
"I understand their concerns and anger,” he said of the people of Mosul. “We are with you. Inshallah the feeling we have now will turn into actual practice," reported Xendan.
The three presidencies of Iraq – the president, prime minister, and parliament speaker – will meet on Friday to discuss “practical prosecution” of those responsible for the tragedy, he added.
In Iraq’s parliamentary system, the role of president is primarily ceremonial as the guardian of the constitution. Salih has not had an administrative role in governance since his post as deputy prime minister of Iraq ended in 2009.
Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi visited survivors at Al Salam Hospital in Mosul on Thursday night and declared three days of national mourning.
“The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) joins the national mourning in Iraq and on this occasion stops Newroz’s activities and official celebrations," read a statement from the KRG which send rescue teams and ambulances to Mosul to help the victims.
Abdul-Mahdi also announced a condolence registry for the victims of the incident at his guest house in Mosul that will be open from Friday until Sunday.
The Iraqi interior ministry is involved in the case, and the justice ministry says it has ordered the arrest of nine ferry company officials and its owners.
Locals have blamed the capsizing on an overloaded boat and rising water levels.
"The passenger boat couldn’t carry all these people. Its deck fell and then the boat drowned. Many boats came, but none could rescue them," one angry man wagging his fingers told Rudaw's reporter in Mosul. Another called for the execution of the people behind the tragedy. Others called for the resignation of the current governor of the province.
This tragedy comes just over a year after Mosul was taken by the Iraqi security forces after three years of Islamic State (ISIS) control from 2014-2017. Abdul-Mahdi has ordered an investigation and a committee formed to find the cause of the capsized ferry.
