Four children die in Iraq hospital fire

Baghdad: Four children were killed in a fire Monday in a maternity ward in southern Iraq, the Iraqi health ministry and Red Cross announced.
The Iraqi Red Cross said in a communique that 150 children and 190 adults were evacuated from the fire in the town of Diwaniyah, about 175 kilometers south of Baghdad.
The fire was caused by an electrical short-circuit that lit wastepaper and materials belonging to a company renovating the hospital, health minister Saleh Al-Hasnawi said during a press conference on the site shortly after firemen had extinguished the flames.
“The smoke entered the establishment, but not the fire itself,” he said. Four prematurely born babies in the neo-natal intensive care unit died of respiratory complications, he said.
Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani ordered the firing of those “responsible for negligence.”
Safety norms are rarely respected in the construction and transport sectors in Iraq.