Iraqi health minister resigns in wake of deadly hospital fire May 4, 2021 at 7:39 pm | Published in: Coronavirus, Iraq, Middle East, News
Iraqi Health Minister Hassan Mohammed al-Tamimi (2nd R) in Baghdad, Iraq on January 21, 2021 [Murtadha Al-Sudani/Anadolu Agency] May 4, 2021 at 7:39 pm
Iraqi Health Minister Hassan al-Tamimi resigned on Tuesday after a fire at a Baghdad hospital last month claimed 130 lives, a government statement said,
Anadolu Agency reported.
Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi has accepted the resignation, according to the Prime Ministry s media office.
According to the statement, al-Tamimi handed his resignation after an investigation committee, tasked to look into the fire incident, submitted its report to the Council of Ministers for voting.
Card. Sako pained at Iraq’s Covid-19 hospital fire
The Patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church blames the tragedy on corrupt authorities who misappropriate public funds, depriving people of adequate services.
By Robin Gomes
The head of the Chaldean Catholic Church has expressed deep grief for 82 people killed in a massive blaze that erupted Saturday night in a hospital for Covid-19 patients in Baghdad, Iraq. The fire also injured 110 others. The casualties included relatives tending to their patients.
“It was with great pain and sadness that we received the news, early morning, of a fire in Ibn Al-Khatib Hospital in Baghdad, which is designated for treating people with the Corona pandemic, and the death of more than eighty people and the wounding of many,” Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako, the Patriarch of the Chaldean Church, wrote in a condolence message on Sunday.
Xinhua | Updated: 2021-04-27 09:50 Share CLOSE Medical staff members walk near the main entrance of Ibn Khatib hospital where a fire was sparked by an oxygen tank explosion, in Baghdad, Iraq, April 26, 2021. [Photo/Agencies]
BAGHDAD - The Iraqi Independent High Commission for Human Rights (IHCHR) said on Monday that the death toll of the hospital fire on Saturday night might reach 130. The approximate number of deaths, according to the testimonies obtained by the IHCHR team, may reach 130, including unidentified badly charred bodies, said an IHCHR statement.
According to the IHCHR team, the fire was caused by an explosion of an oxygen cylinder inside Ibn al-Khatib Hospital dedicated to treating coronavirus patients in the east of the capital Baghdad, the statement added.
Randa Slim
Senior Fellow and Director of Conflict Resolution and Track II Dialogues Program
News from Iraq often shifts between the good and the very bad. Successes and disasters alternate in a regular news cycle, and the last few days have been no exception. On April 18, information leaked to news outlets revealed that Iraq hosted direct talks on April 9 between Iranian and Saudi delegations, primarily to discuss Yemen. On April 25, we saw the horrific pictures of the fire at the Ibn al-Khatib Hospital, in which at least 82 people were killed, many of them COVID-19 patients, and hundreds wounded.
If the Iranian-Saudi meeting in Baghdad is the result of competent and smart Iraqi diplomacy, the hospital tragedy is the result of endemic corruption and a culture of impunity in a political class that has since 2003 treated the country and its resources as their spoils of war.
26 Apr 2021
Protests broke out across Iraq on Sunday to denounce the Iraqi government’s alleged “mismanagement and corruption,” which many Iraqis say they blame for a hospital fire on Saturday in Baghdad that killed at least 82 people and injured an additional 112.
“Demonstrations took place in the provinces of Baghdad, Dhi Qar, Wasit, Babil, Karbala, Najaf, Muthanna and Basra in solidarity with the victims of the fire that ripped through Ibn al-Khatib Hospital on Saturday night,” the Iraqi Kurdish news agency Rudaw reported on April 25.
“What happened yesterday was a massacre, and it can happen in any hospital in any governorate in Iraq due to the dilapidated health system, so corrupt local governments must be dismissed first,” a protester named Saif al-Mansoori who demonstrated in the central city of Najaf on Sunday told Rudaw.