More than 35 dead in building fire in Kuwait

More than 35 people died when a fire broke out early Wednesday morning in a building housing nearly 200 foreign workers in Kuwait.

Officials said that dozens of people were injured in the fire. According to the Ministry of Health, 43 people were injured when a fire broke out in the Mangaf area, south of Kuwait City. Mangaf is an area where migrant workers are concentrated.

“Unfortunately, we received a report of a fire in the Mangaf area at around six in the morning,” said Maj. Gen. Eid Al-Owaihan, head of the Interior Ministry’s General Department of Criminal Evidence, adding, “The death toll behind my building is over 35.”

According to the information given to the minister by the employer of the workers, the pictures obtained from the scene showed that the outside of the six-storey building was blackened. One hundred and ninety-six workers live in the building.

The oil-rich country of Kuwait has a large number of foreign workers. Many of these are from South and Southeast Asia and most work in manufacturing or service industries.

According to a source in the General Fire Department, the victims were suffocated by the smoke that came out after the ground floor fire. “Forensic teams are working at the scene and so far three bodies have been identified”, said Owaihan.

The nationalities of the victims were not announced, but when contacted by AFP, the Indian ambassador said he had visited the survivors in hospital.

Interior Minister Sheikh Fahd Al-Yousef visited the scene and said that the owner of the building has been arrested to investigate possible negligence. He warned that any property found to be in violation of security regulations would be evacuated immediately.

“We will work to address the problem of overcrowding and neglect of workers, detaining the owner of the property where the fire took place until the legal process is completed”, he said.

This fire is one of the worst in Kuwait, which is located on the border of Iraq and Saudi Arabia and has about 7% of the world’s oil reserves.

In 2009, a Kuwaiti woman set fire to a wedding tent in revenge for her husband’s remarriage, killing 57 people. While people were celebrating inside, Nusra al-Anji threw gasoline on the tents and set them on fire. He was sentenced to death in 2017 for the crime. Many women and children were among the victims of the incident.