More than 100 people killed in fire at wedding party in Iraq

At least 114 people have been killed and another 150 injured after a fire broke out at a Christian wedding in northern Iraq, the health ministry has said.

The fire happened on Wednesday in the Hamdaniya area of the Nineveh province, authorities said, close to the city of Mosul and around 200 miles from the capital Baghdad.

There was no immediate word on the cause of the blaze but initial reports by the Kurdish television news channel Rudaw suggested fireworks at the venue may have sparked the fire. Television footage showed charred debris inside the wedding hall.

Civil defence officials quoted by the Iraqi News Agency described the wedding hall’s exterior as being decorated with highly flammable cladding that is illegal in the country.

Authorities have warned the death toll could climb higher.

Health Ministry spokesman Saif al-Badr told the state-run Iraqi News Agency: “All efforts are being made to provide relief to those affected by the unfortunate accident.”

Najim al-Jubouri, the provincial governor of Nineveh, said some of the injured had been transferred to regional hospitals.

He cautioned there were no final casualty figures yet from the blaze.

In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Iraq’s Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ Al Sudani said he had phoned the governor and “the Ministers of Interior and Health are directed to mobilize all efforts to provide relief to those affected by the unfortunate incident”.

Iraq’s Christian minority has over the past two decades been violently targeted by extremists first from al-Qaeda and the Islamic State militant group.

Although the Nineveh plains, the historic homeland, was wrested back from the Islamic State group six years ago, some towns are still mostly rubble and lack basic services. Many Christians have left for Europe, Australia or the United States.