More than 35 dead, dozens injured in building fire in Kuwait

More than 35 people were killed and dozens injured after a dawn fire broke out in a building housing nearly 200 foreign workers in Kuwait, officials said Wednesday.

Forty-three people were injured, the Health Ministry said, in the fire in the Mangaf region of southern Kuwait, which is heavily populated by migrant workers.

“Unfortunately, we received a report of a fire at… 6:00 a.m. sharp (03:00 GMT) in the Mangaf area,” said Major General Eid Al-Owaihan, head of the General Department of Criminal Evidence of the Ministry of the Interior. site.

“As for the deaths in the building behind me, the number exceeds 35 so far.”

Images from the scene showed soot blackening the exterior of the six-story building which housed 196 workers, according to information provided to the minister by their employer.

Oil-rich Kuwait has a large number of foreign workers, many from South and Southeast Asia, working mainly in the construction or service sectors.

According to a fire source, the victims suffocated because of the smoke that rose after the fire broke out on the ground floor.

Forensic teams are working at the site and have so far identified three bodies, Owaihan said.

The nationalities of the victims were not announced but the Indian ambassador, contacted by AFP, indicated that he was at the hospital to visit the survivors.

Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar said on X that he was “deeply shocked by the news” and offered “his deepest condolences to the families of those who tragically lost their lives.”

The building's owner was arrested as part of an investigation into possible negligence, Interior Minister Sheikh Fahd Al-Yousef said during his visit to the site.

Any property found to have violated safety regulations will be evacuated immediately, he warned.

“We will strive to resolve the problem of overpopulation and neglect of the workforce,” the minister said. “We will detain the owner of the property where the fire broke out until legal proceedings are completed.”

The fire is one of the worst ever seen in Kuwait, a country bordering Iraq and Saudi Arabia and home to about seven percent of the world's oil reserves.

In 2009, 57 people died when a Kuwaiti woman, apparently seeking revenge, set fire to a tent at a wedding after her husband had married a second wife.

Nusra al-Enezi threw gasoline on the tent and set it on fire while people celebrated inside. She was hanged in 2017 for this crime, which left many women and children among the victims.