Christian religious leaders in northern Iraq called for a global investigation Monday right into a deadly wedding fire that killed greater than 100 people last week and slammed the federal government’s probe, which had blamed the blaze on negligence and lack of precautionary measures.
An Iraqi Syriac Catholic priest, meanwhile, said widespread corruption within the country and the influence of armed militias on the federal government was certainly one of the aspects that enabled the hearth.
Father Boutros Sheeto, spoke to The Associated Press over the phone from the town of Qaraqosh, where five members of his family, including his Iraqi-American sister, were buried on Monday morning. He claimed the hearth was “intentional,” without offering any evidence.
Scores of panicked guests surged for the exits on Tuesday night within the Haitham Royal Wedding Hall within the predominantly Christian area of Hamdaniya in Nineveh province after the ceiling panels above a pyrotechnic machine burst into flames.
Iraq released the outcomes of its probe on Sunday saying unsafe fireworks were the foremost reason that caused the hearth that killed 107 and injured 82. Several local officials in Nineveh were also subjected to “administrative measures” due to negligence.
“We reject the concept the explanation for the hearth was an accident,” Sheeto said. “We are confident that it was intentional and subsequently we demand a global investigation.”
Ten of his relatives, including his sister Faten Sheeto who had traveled to Iraq from her home in Arizona to attend the marriage were killed by the hearth.
Iraqi media quoted Chaldean Catholic Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako from Rome as saying the blaze “was the act of somebody who sold his conscience and nation for a particular agenda.”
In July, Sako left his Baghdad headquarters and returned to northern Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region after Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid revoked a decree recognizing his position as patriarch of the Chaldeans, Iraq’s largest Christian denomination and certainly one of the Catholic Church’s eastern rites.
Another Iraqi Christian religious leader, Syriac Catholic Archbishop of Mosul Benedictus Younan Hanno said a probe must be done under “the supervision of international investigators,” and added that he and others among the many Iraqi Christians don’t accept the outcomes of the Iraqi probe.
On Monday, the Nineveh Heath Department updated the death toll to 113, including 41 who haven’t been identified yet. It said 12 individuals who suffered severe burns were sent for treatment abroad and eight will follow.
The tragedy was the newest to hit Iraq’s Christian minority, which has dwindled to a fraction of its former size over the past twenty years.
The decline began before the militant Islamic State group’s persecution of non secular minorities after the extremists captured large parts of Iraq in 2014. Christians were amongst groups targeted by militants as security broke down after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that overthrew Saddam Hussein.
The variety of Christians in Iraq today is estimated at 150,000, in comparison with 1.5 million in 2003. Iraq’s total population is over 40 million.
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Mroue reported from Beirut
