A Fire at a Wedding Hall in Northern Iraq Kills at Least 100 People and Injures 150 More

BAGHDAD (AP) — A fire at a wedding hall in northern Iraq killed at least 100 people and injured 150 others, authorities said Wednesday.

The fire happened in Iraq's Nineveh province in its Hamdaniya area, authorities said. That's a predominantly Christian area just outside of the northern city of Mosul, some 335 kilometers (205 miles) northwest of the capital, Baghdad.

There was no immediate official word on the cause of the blaze, but initial reports by the Kurdish television news channel Rudaw suggested fireworks at the venue may have sparked the fire.

Television footage showed charred debris inside the wedding hall as a man shouted at firefighters.

Health Ministry spokesman Saif al-Badr gave the casualty figure via the state-run Iraqi News Agency.

“All efforts are being made to provide relief to those affected by the unfortunate accident,” al-Badr said.

Najim al-Jubouri, the provincial governor of Nineveh, said some of the injured had been transferred to regional hospitals. He cautioned there were no final casualty figures yet from the blaze, which suggests the death toll still may rise.

___

Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.