An injured Iraqi bride and groom have vowed to leave the city after their wedding ended in tragedy when a fire ripped through the venue, killing 107 people.
Bride Haneen, 18, lost ten members of her family in the devastating fire, including her mother and brother, while her new husband Revan, 27, lost 15 relatives.
The tragedy struck the northern town of Qaraqosh, a center of Iraq’s small Christian community, last Tuesday.
The newlyweds were slow dancing when the ceiling above them caught fire, raining fiery debris on the hundreds of people below.
Officials revealed Sunday that the venue’s clumsy owner had plunged the venue into darkness by turning off the electricity when the flames broke out, suspecting a short circuit had caused the blaze, causing chaos among guests rushing for the exit .
While the couple managed to escape, more than 150 people were injured by the flames, choking smoke or the rush to flee the reception hall.
‘We are dead inside. We are numb. We’re dead inside,” Revan said.
An aggrieved Iraqi bride and groom have vowed to leave the city after their wedding ended in tragedy when a fire ripped through the venue, killing 107 people
Newlyweds Haneen and Ravan were slow dancing at their Christian wedding in the northern city of Qaraqosh near Mosul when their ceremony descended into chaos.
Revan added that his new bride is ‘not able to talk’ after the disaster which also left her father in a critical condition.
Officials initially suggested indoor fireworks were the cause of the inferno, but a shocked Revan spoke up Sky News it could have started in the ceiling.
‘It could be a short circuit, I don’t know. But the fire started in the ceiling. We felt the heat… When I heard the crackling, I looked at the ceiling,” he told the news station.
‘Then the ceiling, which was made entirely of nylon, started to melt. It only took a few seconds.’
He said the power went out before their dance and then came back on. At this point Revan said he saw fire coming from the ceiling.
Haneen couldn’t flee because of her wedding dress, so Revan grabbed her and dragged her away from the fire, he said.
“I kept dragging her and trying to get her out of the kitchen entrance. As people fled, people trampled her. Her legs are injured,” he said Sky News.
“Our family members, our friends, our loved ones are all gone,” Revan said. The couple have now buried uncles, aunts and cousins as they continue to wait for news on Haneen’s father’s condition.
The couple said they would no longer be able to live in their hometown and that their happiness had been “destroyed.”
The video shows a woman screaming as the large burning chandelier falls onto a table, engulfing it in flames. The fire killed 107 people and injured dozens of others
Haneen (left) and Ravan (right), who were initially feared dead, managed to escape through the kitchen. But more than a hundred wedding guests, including the bride’s three brothers, her uncles and young cousins and the groom’s mother, all died in the fire.
Their comments came as it was revealed the venue’s clumsy owner caused chaos by accidentally plunging the venue into darkness as flames broke out.
Interior Minister Abdel Amir al-Shammari told a news conference that the owner, believing a short circuit had caused the fire, had cut off the electricity, causing “chaos, panic and a stampede.”
Al-Shammari – who announced on Sunday that a mayor and his fire chief were among five Iraqi officials fired for “serious negligence” over the fire – said no more than 400 people should have been in the room.
That night, however, it held more than 900 people, he said, confirming that the fire on the night of September 26 was accidental.
Public anger has flared over the high death toll, which currently stands at 107, according to General Saad Faleh, head of the commission investigating the tragedy.
Shammari said those fired include: the mayor of Qaraqosh; the municipal director; the head of tourism and recreation department; an electricity official; and the head of firefighting and security of the Civil Defense Corps of Nineveh Province.
The Civil Defense chief will face a disciplinary committee, Shammari added.
In addition to negligence, the officials were dismissed for “failures in the performance of their duties,” he said.
“The mayor was negligent: the hall was built illegally on the ground, but the mayor gave permission for its use without permission from other government agencies,” the minister said.
The Civil Defense had carried out an inspection of the site earlier this year and the owner was ordered to remove the ceiling by October due to the highly flammable materials, he added.
The “main cause” of the fire was four fireworks that shot showers of sparks four meters high, Faleh said, adding that this set fire to the prefabricated panels in the ceiling as well as the hall’s decorations.
The fire killed 107 people, and hundreds more gathered for their funerals in the days that followed
Mourners carry a coffin during the funeral of the victims of the fatal wedding fire in Hamdaniya, Iraq, on Thursday
Volunteers search for the remains of missing bodies after a fatal fire at a wedding party in Iraq on Thursday
Of the 14 people previously arrested by security forces, four, including the venue owner, were directly responsible for installing the fireworks, Faleh said.
Both bride and groom survived the fire.
Safety standards are often poorly enforced in Iraq, a country still recovering from decades of dictatorship, war and unrest and still plagued by corruption, mismanagement and often dilapidated infrastructure.
Public discontent flared into a nationwide protest movement that began in October 2019. Nearly 500 protesters gathered in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square on Sunday to commemorate the anniversary, which police – confronted with stones hurled by demonstrators – dispersed with sound grenades, an AFP photographer said.