A fire at a hotel in the northern Iraqi city of Sulaimaniya killed 30 people, including foreigners, and injured at least 22 others, police said today.
A security official said the fire in Iraq's relatively stable and violence-free Kurdish region was not a terrorist act and the cause was under investigation. It was possibly triggered by a gas leak.
The fire broke out late yesterday in a restaurant on the ground floor of the Soma hotel in the centre of the city and raged out of control for several hours, officials said.
Among those killed were Bangladeshi hotel workers and a Briton, an American, a Canadian, a Japanese, a Pole, an Ecuadorean and an Australian, a police source said.
The source said some worked for Asiacell, an Iraqi mobile phone operator in which Qatar Telecommunications Co (Qtel) has a 30 per cent stake. Another police official said a Chinese citizen also was among the dead.
Iraq's minority Kurds were oppressed by Arab dictator Saddam Hussein but have enjoyed virtual independence under Western protection since the 1991 end of the first Gulf War.
As the rest of Iraq descended into sectarian warfare and a raging insurgency after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, Iraqi Kurdistan's relative stability has drawn foreign investors, principally from Turkey and the Middle East.
"This is not a terrorist act," Qader Hama-Jan, the head of local security operations, said of the fire.
Women and children were among the casualties. "Most of the people who were killed were choked because of the smoke. They could not get out," said Dr. Reqot Hama-Rasheed, head of the health department.
"According to the information that we have, it was a gas leak. Otherwise it could not have spread this quickly," police Colonel Aras Baker told local television.
At least three of the victims died jumping from the third floor to escape the flames, an official said.
Reuters