Medical warehouse burns in Kirkuk as coronavirus numbers rise

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – A large medical warehouse storing medications needed to treat coronavirus in downtown Kirkuk caught fire on Friday. The crucial supplies were destroyed as numbers of new cases rise on a daily basis. 

The fire started place around 6:00 Friday and was extinguished about two hours later. Firefighters had to break through the walls of the building to access the interior. 

The warehouse belonged to Kirkuk’s Great Hospital, one of the main hospitals in the city. It was storing a large amount of medications, but is one of 10 such sites in Kirkuk so the fire may not lead to a major shortage, head of the provincial health directorate Ziyad Khalaf told Rudaw. 

The fire was caused by an electrical fault. “The only reason was electric fault, nothing else,” Ammar Abdulzahra, an Iraqi army commander who supervised the emergency response, told Rudaw. There were no injuries reported. 

Iraq, in an economic crisis and with a fragile health system, is seeing a dramatic increase in single-day reports of new cases of the virus. Nearly 150,000 people have contracted the virus. On Friday, the health ministry recorded 3,461 new cases, including 78 in Kirkuk.

Since the first case was confirmed in late February, 5,236 people have died. 

Reporting by Hiwa Hussamedin