This is the horrifying moment a deadly fire broke out during a bride and groom’s first dance at a wedding ceremony in Iraq, before the raging inferno engulfed the hall killing at least 100 people and injured 150 more.
Video purportedly shows the newlyweds Haneen and Revan slow-dancing before the fire, believed to have been started by fireworks, tore through the large hall in the northern town of Qaraqosh near Mosul.
Hanneen, wearing a large white wedding dress, can be seen turning around in horror to see the flames climbing up the walls at a rapid pace before burning material began to fall from the roof.
Chaos ensued, with the up to 900 panicked wedding guests rushing towards the exits as the wedding hall was engulfed in flames and filled with toxic smoke. Survivors have told how many were left trapped in the burning hall as they couldn’t see through the black smoke.
The bride and groom are among the more than 100 people killed in the deadly blaze according to health official Ahmed Dubardani, while 150 more are injured – 50 critically.
Hundreds of wedding guests, many of them children, were rushed to hospital with severe burns across their bodies, with many fighting for their lives.
Wedding guest Rania Waad, who sustained a burn to her hand, said that as Haneen and Revan ‘were slow dancing, the fireworks started to climb to the ceiling and the whole hall went up in flames’.
‘We couldn’t see anything,’ the 17-year-old said, chocking back sobs. ‘We were suffocating, we didn’t know how to get out.’
Civil defense officials quoted by the Iraqi News Agency described the wedding hall’s exterior as being decorated with highly flammable cladding that were illegal in the country
This grab shows the wedding moments before the blaze
The bride Haneen and groom Revan (pictured) are among the more than 100 people killed in the deadly blaze according to health official Ahmed Dubardani
A view of the destroyed wedding hall in the northern Nineveh province in Mosul, Iraq, on Wednesday
People gather at the site of a fatal fire at a wedding celebration with the charred remains of the building seen within on Wednesday
An injured child lays on a hospital bed after a fire broke out at a wedding celebration in the northern Nineveh province in Mosul, Iraq on Wednesday
An injured man lays on a hospital bed after a fire broke out at the wedding ceremony, killing at least 100 people
Civil defense officials quoted by the Iraqi News Agency described the wedding hall’s exterior as being decorated with highly flammable cladding that were illegal in the country.
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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, which suggests the death toll still may rise.
Ambulances and medical crews were dispatched to the site by federal Iraqi authorities and authorities in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, according to official statements.
Television footage showed charred debris inside of the wedding hall as an man shouted at firefighters.
Health Ministry spokesman Saif al-Badr gave the casualty figure via the state-run Iraqi News Agency.
‘All efforts are being made to provide relief to those affected by the unfortunate accident,’ al-Badr said.
A man walks through the gutted out remains of the wedding hall where at least 100 people were killed on Wednesday
Iraqi security officials inspect the site of the fire on Wednesday in Mosul, Iraq
A view of the destroyed wedding hall in the northern Nineveh province in Mosul, Iraq, on Wednesday
Iraqi security men inspect the scene of a fire that broke out at a wedding hall in Hamdaniya, in Iraq’s Nineveh province, on Wednesday
Soldiers and emergency responders gather around ambulances carrying wounded people after a fire broke out at a wedding hall
At least 100 people died in a fire at a wedding in a festival hall in Hamdaniyah
Soldiers and emergency responders outside Hamdaniyah general hospital in Bakhdida
It wasn’t immediately clear why authorities in Iraq allowed the cladding to be used on the hall, though corruption and mismanagement remains endemic two decades after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.
While some types of cladding can be made with fire-resistant material, experts say those that have caught fire at the wedding hall and elsewhere weren’t designed to meet stricter safety standards and often were put onto buildings without any breaks to slow or halt a possible blaze.
That includes the 2017 Grenfell Fire in London that killed 72 people in the greatest loss of life in a fire on British soil since World War II, as well as multiple high-rise fires in the United Arab Emirates.
