Father and two children die in blaze at IDP camp in Zakho

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — A  man and two of his children have died in a fire at Bersive 2 IDP camp in Zakho, an official from the provincial health department has confirmed. 

The unnamed man, 31, was killed with his son, 10, and daughter, 11, after a fire broke out at 2:30am on Wednesday morning, Amir Ali, head of Zakho's health department confirmed to Rudaw. 

Camp residents have told Rudaw English that the family are from the Yazidi ethnoreligious minority.

Five other people were injured, Ali added, including the man's wife and other son. 

The woman, 31, has burns over 35 percent of her body, Dr Falah Hassan, who treated the wounded in Duhok, told Rudaw's Naif Ramazan.  Two children, aged eight and ten years old, survived with 35 percent and 50 percent burns to their bodies, he added. 

"I had a call saying that my daughter’s tent has burned in Bersive.She lived with her husband there and I am in Chamishko camp. Her husband and two of the children burned and died in the fire, and the others are wounded. We took them to Zakho and from there they sent them to Duhok," the woman's father, Khero Khudeida, told Rudaw.

The camp is home to more than 7,000 people, mostly Yazidis, according to January 2021 data published by the Joint Crisis Coordination Centre (JCC) . 

Approximately 110,000 Yazidis are still displaced in the Kurdistan Region after the Islamic State (ISIS) attack on Shingal in 2014, according to data sent to Rudaw by the Office for Yezidi Abductees' Affairs on Monday. 

Fires are a regular occurrence at IDP camps across the Kurdistan Region. 

Updated at 11:02am