ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - As flames licked up the walls and choking, black smoke billowed from the windows, terrified residents of a building in Soran screamed for help. Fourteen people were killed in the blaze late on Friday. Nearly 48 hours later, five people have been arrested though the cause of the fire is still unknown.
Haunting footage shows smoke rising from the ground floor and sweeping through the upper floors as people trapped inside wave to attract the attention of rescue crews.
Mohammed Aziz is an eyewitness. When he arrived, he saw four sofas on fire and tried to put out the flames.
“I could not control the fire, so I called the fire department, but they arrived late,” he recounted.
Inside the building, people “were screaming, calling for help. They were not leaving the building. They were by the windows, calling for help,” he said.
All 14 of the victims died from smoke inhalation, according to the health directorate.
Soran administration declared three days of mourning.The aft
On the night of the fire, Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani ordered the interior ministry to establish a committee to investigate the tragedy.
That committee will investigate every detail and all shortcomings will be announced to the public, Halgurd Sheikh Najib, supervisor of Soran administration, said in a press conference on Saturday, vowing to heed any recommendations that come out of the investigation.
During an interview with Rudaw on Sunday, Rajab Zuber, the mayor of Soran, said the committee will visit the site of the fire, talk to eyewitnesses, and later will present a final report to the interior ministry and the town’s administration.
Five people have already been arrested.
“Five people have been detained by the order of a judge and they are being interrogated,” Zuber said. The five are the owner and employees of a sofa factory that was located in the building, and the owner of the building.
Initial reports indicated that the fire was caused by an electrical shortage, but that has not been confirmed.
“At the beginning, it was thought it was due to an electrical short circuit, but now various reasons have appeared. Maybe the reason is not an electrical short circuit, but it could have been coal that was used to smoke shisha. But how did it happen and who was negligent, is yet to be known,” Zuber said.
Soran supervisor Najib believes that lack of knowledge of basic safety protocols was one of the contributing factors in the death of 14 people. “One of the reasons is the people’s lack of awareness of how to evacuate the building in such cases,” he said.
Different nationalities, one sad fate
Four women and ten men died in the fire. Two of the victims were from Soran and the rest were from Syria, Iran, and southern Iraq.
Sana Samih, 24, was a Kurdish language teacher. She and her husband of a year and a half, Mustafa Ismail, 30, were waiting for the birth of their first child. He was studying for a masters degree in Arabic language at the College of Linguistics at Soran University.
“I was at home. Sana called and said the building was on fire, come [to help us]. When we went, I could not go upstairs, the fire was too strong. They called twice. They also called me when I was in front of the building,” said Ismail Sadiq, Mustafa’s father, speaking at the funeral of his son and daughter-in-law.
Sadiq said he could see signs of life through their apartment windows for at least half an hour.
“They were flashing their lights, but later, even the lights stopped,” he said.
In another apartment, newlyweds Ali Wiryan, a Kurd from western Iran (Rojhelat), and Renas Sultan, from northeast Syria, were hosting Omran Muradi and Bahram Muradi, who were also from Iran. They all died in the fire.
The bodies of Bahram and Omran Muradi were returned to their family in Iran through the Haji Omaran border gate, according to their cousin, Shahram Muradi.
“The bodies of both of them are set to return to East Kurdistan [west Iran] today through Haji Omaran and they will be buried in Urmia province,” he said.
Wiryan and Sultan were buried on Saturday in a cemetery in Soran.
Fires are a perennial concern in the Kurdistan Region and Iraq where safety standards are sub-par.
According to data from the Kurdistan Region Police Directorate, a total of 7,546 fire incidents were recorded across the Region in 2022. Faulty electricity and lack of basic safety measures are part of the problem.
In Hamdaniya, anger still simmers after a tragic blaze at a wedding hall in September killed more than 130 people. More than 200 people were killed in two hospital fires in Nasiriyah and Baghdad in 2021.