ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Families and loved ones of the victims of Tuesday’s massive blaze in Nineveh’s Hamdaniya held a funeral mass at the Syriac Catholic Church of the Immaculate Conception (al-Tahira-al-Kubra) on Thursday.
With broken hearts and eyes filled with tears, the mourners said their final goodbyes to their loved ones, honoring their lives and grieving their loss.
Some of those who attended the ceremony were men and women who were injured in the wedding hall inferno.
Over a hundred people lost their lives and hundreds more were injured late on Tuesday when a fire erupted inside a banquet hall hosting a packed wedding in the Assyrian Christian-majority district of Hamdaniya, around 45 kilometers southeast of Iraq’s second-largest northern city of Mosul.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani arrived in Hamdaniya on Thursday morning to assess the aftermath of the tragic incident, and also visited the Syriac Catholic Church of Saint Behnam for a funeral procession.
Iraq on Wednesday announced a three-day mourning period across the country for the victims of the tragic blaze, a call that was soon echoed by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).
Hamdaniya is one of the towns recovering best from the reign of the Islamic State (ISIS), with its churches being gradually rebuilt and its remaining inhabitants in Iraq slowly returning.