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Only in April there was a fire on a corona ward in a clinic in Baghdad (archive picture)
Photo: AP / dpa
At least 50 people died in a major fire on a corona station in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriya.
20 others were injured.
The search for possible further victims continues, a spokesman for the health authorities told the AFP news agency on Monday.
Initially, the authorities reported 20 fatalities.
The people died of severe burns, said the spokesman, who stated the total number of beds in the Corona ward as 60. 16 patients could have been saved from the burning ward, according to hospital circles. Two deceased were therefore employees. Videos published on the online networks showed how huge billows of black smoke rose from the Al-Hussein hospital in Nasiriya. The head of the civil defense department, Kadhem Bohan, announced that the fire has now been extinguished.
It was only in April that there was a devastating fire in a corona clinic in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, in which 82 people died and 110 others were injured.
The then Health Minister Hassan al-Tamimi resigned in response to the fire disaster, the cause of which was stated to be incorrectly stored oxygen bottles.
According to the local police, an exploded oxygen tank could also be the cause of the fire in the current incident.
However, other sources report an electrical short circuit.
nek / AFP