Brian McDonald
Kuwait City — More than 35 people died and dozens were injured after a fire broke out at dawn in a building housing nearly 200 foreign workers in Kuwait, authorities said Wednesday. Forty-three people were injured, the Health Ministry said, in the fire in the Mangaf area south of Kuwait City, which is densely populated by migrant workers.
“Unfortunately, we received a report of a fire… at exactly 6am (0300 GMT) in the Mangaf area,” Major General Eid Al-Owaihan, head of the General Department of Criminal Evidence at the Ministry of Interior, said on the website. “As for the deaths in the building behind me, the number has exceeded 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 the employer.
YASSER AL-ZAYYAT/AFP/Getty
Oil-rich Kuwait has a large number of foreign workers, many of them from South and Southeast Asia, and who work mainly in the construction or service industries.
According to a source from the General Fire Department, the victims died of suffocation from smoke inhalation after the fire started on the ground floor.
Forensic teams are working at the scene and have identified three bodies so far, Owaihan said.
The nationalities of the victims were not announced, but the Indian ambassador, contacted by AFP, said he was in the hospital visiting the survivors.
Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar posted on X that he was “deeply shocked by the news” and offered “deepest condolences to the families of those who tragically lost their lives.”
The building’s owner has been detained in an investigation into potential negligence, Interior Minister Sheikh Fahd Al-Yousef said when visiting the site.
Any properties found to have violated safety regulations will be evacuated immediately, he warned.
“We will work to resolve the issue of overcrowding and labor negligence,” said the minister. “We will detain the owner of the property where the fire occurred until legal proceedings are completed.”
The fire is one of the worst ever seen in Kuwait, which borders Iraq and Saudi Arabia and contains around 7% 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 party when her husband married a second wife.
Nusra al-Enezi poured gasoline on the tent and set it on fire while people celebrated inside. She was hanged in 2017 for the crime, whose victims included many women and children.
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