ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Six members of a family were killed on Wednesday when a fire erupted in a two-story house in Iraq’s southern city of Basra, police said. An investigation has been launched into the incident. The fire broke out at 1:30 pm in a two-story house in central Basra’s Contractors street, killing “six members of a family – a mother and five of her children,” Basra police spokesperson Colonel Aziz Hashim told Rudaw’s Nahro Mohammed. “The incident was caused by a short circuit,” Aziz claimed, and an investigation has been launched to determine the cause of the fire. Fires are a perennial concern in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region where safety standards are sub-par. Electrical faults and the lack of basic safety measures are a major part of the problem. Iraqi civil defense spokesperson Nawas Sabah Shakir later told Rudaw that their teams brought the fire under control. Earlier in April, a fire in Baghdad’s Karrada neighborhood killed six members of a family. More than 20,000 fires were recorded in Iraq in 2023, a significant number but still a decrease from 32,000 in 2022, according to data from Iraq’s civil defense.
