In Saudi Arabia Fire sweeps through hospital wards, killing 25
"We could hear the women screaming," said the man, who was not named.
A fire at a hospital in Saudi Arabia
killed 25 people and injured more than 100 others as it ripped through
the intensive care unit and the maternity ward before dawn, the Saudi
civil defence agency said.
Details of the fire and its victims were scant, but photographs published on Twitter
by the agency showed smoke and an intense blaze which appeared to have
severely damaged the interior of the white-walled hospital.
The fire broke out at the general hospital in the southwestern port city of Jazan, the capital of the Jizan region, one of Saudi Arabia's poorest areas, near the Yemeni border.
Saudi
Arabia's government-controlled al-Ekhbariya television interviewed a
witness who said the cause of the fire appeared to be electrical, and
that it swept through the hospital in just 3 minutes.
"We could hear the women screaming," said the man, who was not named.
The
25 dead included one child, the television quoted the director of civil
defence in Jizan, Major General Saad bin Al-Ghamdi, as saying.
It
was the latest in a string of disasters at public facilities in Saudi
Arabia this year, including the deadly crush at the haj pilgrimage that
killed hundreds of worshippers.
The 107 injured on
Thursday were transferred to other hospitals in the area. The fire was
brought under control and an investigation into its cause was under way,
the agency added.
A Ministry of Health spokesman was not available to comment.
Jazan
is the focus of a $20 billion plan to develop the local economy by
building an industrial complex that produces and uses oil products for
manufacturing.
But some people commenting on
Twitter suggested the fire was a result of official negligence and that
the health minister should resign, although the identities of the
accounts could not be verified.
"Does the
health minister have the courage to submit his resignation after the
fire at Jazan General Hospital? What disaster lies after this calamity?" tweeted one, whose account identified him as Mohammed Alsubaie, from Riyadh.
Criticism
of Saudi Arabia's ruling family is frowned upon, but the comments
online pointed to other infrastructure accidents over the past year.
The
deadly crush at the haj in Mecca in September killed 769 people,
according to Saudi officials. Reuters calculations based on numbers
provided by the pilgrims' home countries showed the death toll was at
least 2,070.
Two weeks earlier, 110 people died in
Mecca's Grand Mosque when a crane working on an expansion project
collapsed during a storm, crushing pilgrims below. In August, fire swept
through an oil workers' residential compound in the town of Khobar,
killing 10 people.
King Salman said on Wednesday
Saudi Arabia would seek to diversify its sources of income and improve
the efficiency of government spending as it strives to reduce its
dependence on oil revenue, which has plunged since last year.
The kingdom is due to announce a budget and detailed roster of economic reforms on Monday.
Jazan
has also been caught up in Saudi Arabia's military intervention against
Houthi rebels in Yemen this year. On Tuesday, Saudi authorities said
they had shot down a ballistic missile fired from Yemen that was on a
trajectory towards Jazan.
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