ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A fire broke out in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Council of Ministers building in central Erbil early Saturday morning. The fire began at around one o’clock in the morning. Firefighters were quickly dispatched to the area and brought the blaze under control, according to Rudaw’s reporter on the ground Dilniya Rahman. "A fire broke out in the kitchen of the Council of Ministers late last night due to an explosion of a water boiler. The fire caused material damage to the restaurant and part of the building," read a statement from the KRG. The boiler explosion ignited a gas cylinder, according to Erbil’s civil defense teams. “The place where the fire broke out was a kitchen and the material damage is around 20 to 25 million dinars,” The Erbil civil defense announced in a statement on Facebook on Saturday. Fires are a perennial concern in the Kurdistan Region and Iraq where safety standards are sub-par. Electrical faults and lack of basic safety measures are a major part of the problem. According to data from the Kurdistan Region Police Directorate, a total of 7,546 fire incidents were recorded in 2022. The police directorate is yet to announce statistics for 2023. In December, a blaze killed 14 people in Soran.
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