A fire broke out at a maternity ward in Yarmouk hospital in western Baghdad late Tuesday night, killing at least 12 newborn babies.
A fire broke out at a maternity ward in Yarmouk hospital in western Baghdad late Tuesday night, killing at least 12 newborn babies.
According to the hospital director, Saad Hatem Ahmed, the initial investigation revealed it was an electrical fire. 29 female patients and eight babies were relocated to another hospital from the ward where the fire struck.
Electrical fires are common in Iraq because of poor wiring, a lack of fire escapes, and failure by construction companies to follow accepted procedure when building structures.
Some of the babies who died in the fire were prematurely born. On Wednesday morning, fathers and other relatives arrived looking for their missing newborns. A father, 30-year-old Hussein Omar, said he lost twins in the fire. The hospital sent him to another Baghdad hospital where some patients were moved. When he was unable to find them, he returned to Yarmouk where he was told to look in the morgue.
“I only found charred pieces of flesh. I want my baby boy and girl back. The government must give them back to me,” he said amidst tears.
Shaima Hassan, a 36-year-old who spent more than a year trying to conceive a baby also lost a newborn in the blaze, her two-day-old son.
“I waited for ages to have this baby an when I finally had him, it only took a second to lose him.”
Hassan explained that the uproar began at midnight at the ward.
“People started screaming, ‘Fire, fire,” and running,” she said. She and her husband, visiting, ran for the newborns, but were blocked by smoke, adding that someone broke a window and threw her out of the hospital.
Eshrak Ahmed Jaasar, 41, a woman searching for her four-day-old nephew spoke on the subject, saying that her nephew is missing and his mother had been moved to another hospital ward.
“We pay the hospital employees thousands of Iraqi dinars to allow us in to get our loved ones basic food and milk, which they cannot provide. It’s a corrupt government that doesn’t care about its citizens and lets this happen.”
