ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — A child was killed when four tents in Sulaimani province’s Ashti camp caught fire on Thursday. The camp houses thousands of people who fled Islamic State group (ISIS) attacks in northern Iraq in 2014. The cause of the fire appeared to be an electrical fault in a tent whose owner was not at home at the time, camp residents told Rudaw’s Arkan Ali at the scene. When the flames reached a nearby barrel of oil, it exploded and set alight three other tents. Ali Uday Hussein, 8, from Salahaddin province was in one of these tents and was not able to flee in time. Tofiq Sabah, a resident of the camp, said the fire department is far from the camp. “We demand four additional fire fighting vehicles so that possible fires are extinguished quickly,” Nasih Nasrullah, another camp resident, told Rudaw. “We also want the tents to be separated with a barrier to prevent the spread of fire.” Salih Haji Fatah, who supervises Sulaimani camps, told Rudaw that the fire could have spread to the whole camp if the firefighting teams had not been able to bring it under control. Camp management has promised to provide the victims with new tents and household needs by tomorrow. Ashti camp is located in Arbat town and is home to some 8,000 people, mostly from northern Iraq, including Shingal. Fires are a constant hazard in refugee and IDP camps in the Kurdistan Region. Hundreds of tents burned in Duhok’s Sharya camp on June 4.
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