At least 61 people have died in a devastating fire at the newly opened Corniche Hypermarket Mall in Kut, eastern Iraq. There are still eleven more people missing, and it is thought that they are dead. The accident, which happened only five days after the mall opened, shocked the whole country and showed how terrible Iraq’s building codes and safety enforcement are.
The Corniche Mall was built to highlight how the economy is booming in Kut. It includes five storeys with a supermarket, cafés, retailers, and other enjoyable things to do. On the night of the fire, families and shoppers were glad to have a break from the heat and power disruptions that strike most of Iraq in the summer. But what started out as a routine day of dining and shopping quickly turned into a terrifying one.
According to Iraq’s Interior Ministry, the fire started on the first floor of the building. It quickly spread to the floors above. Witnesses and early reports suggest that the explosion of an air conditioner, which may have been caused by an electrical fault or overheating, was likely the cause of the incident. But the investigations are still going on. The fire spread quite quickly once it started, consuming everything that might catch fire and filled stairwells and halls with dense smoke.
Mall staff and emergency procedures didn’t help much, and survivors reported that people were confused and scared when smoke alarms didn’t go off or were disregarded. A lot of people got confused in the hallways that were full of smoke and sought to find emergency exits that were hard to get to, badly marked, or entirely blocked. The building was brand new, but it didn’t have any of the basic safety elements it needed, such functional sprinklers, building materials that wouldn’t catch fire, and clear escape routes. These issues turned out to be fatal.
A local doctor named Dr. Nasir al-Quraishi lost five family members in the fire and delivered a story that made everyone very sad. They went to the mall because there was no power in our region. It was warm. “They thought it would be a good way to cool off and spend the night,” he remarked, sounding rather startled. An air conditioner on the second level blew out and caused the fire. It happened quickly. We tried to leave, but we couldn’t. He also said that the smoke filled the building in just a few minutes, making it impossible to use the stairs.
One person reported that as the fire started and the power went out, he spotted five of his family members stranded in an elevator. Before rescuers could get to them, the heat and smoke in the elevator were too much for the individuals inside, making it a deadly trap. Some victims were found huddled in bathrooms, where they probably felt they were safe from the fire but died because there was no air flow.
After a rapid response, civil defense teams were able to save more than forty-five persons from the building. But the fire was too bad and the structure wasn’t built well, which made things worse for them. Some of the people who worked on the rescue claimed it was one of the hardest things they had ever done. It was hard or impossible to identify a lot of charred bodies without forensic analysis.
People all throughout the country are upset and enraged about what happened. Muhammad Jamil al-Miyahi, the governor of Wasit, said that there would be three days of formal mourning and that he would take the mall’s owner and contractor to court. He claimed that making sure the mall was safe before it opened was a “complete failure of responsibility” and “gross negligence.” Al-Miyahi also asked the federal government to make safety rules harsher and to check all of the province’s commercial structures right away.
In response, Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani told the government to look into the situation fully to find out what really transpired. He formed a team to look into the licensing and inspection processes that allowed the mall to open without proper safety gear and the cause of the fire. The prime minister made it plain that anyone who are found to be at fault, whether through cutting costs carelessly, supervision, or corruption, will face consequences.
This isn’t the first time something like this has happened, which is too bad. Poor building procedures, substandard materials, and weak safety laws have led to deadly fires in Iraq in the past. In 2023, a huge fire at a wedding venue in Nineveh Province killed more than 100 individuals. This made people very angry and caused riots. A fire in the COVID-19 critical care unit of a Baghdad hospital killed more than 60 people in 2021. The wiring was faulty, and there were too many patients in the room, so the oxygen tanks blew up and began the fire. In every case, there were promises of change, but things stayed basically the same.
The fire at the Corniche Mall is the most recent in a long line of terrible events that could have been avoided. It is a sobering reminder of what can happen when money, speed, or convenience come before safety. The country is once again in mourning, angry, and looking for answers as families bury their dead and others look for loved ones who are missing.
There are black flags flying over homes and businesses in Kut, and people are sorrowful. Many Iraqis can relate to this tragedy because it was a great loss that could have been averted. People all around the country are now pushing for swift change, open government, and true accountability so that no more lives are lost in such tragic, avoidable situations.