WATCH | Newlywed Couple Froze, Guests Ran for Cover as Iraqi Wedding Hall Went Up in Flames – News18

A video capturing the initial moments of the blaze that engulfed a wedding hall in the Iraqi town of Qaraqosh which killed over 107 people and injured over 150 is going viral on social media.

Pakistani digital creator Ali Qasim shared the video where a drone camera inside the wedding hall captured the exact moment the fireworks ignited the prefabricated panels in the ceiling and also the hall’s decorations.

The four fireworks that shot showers of sparks four metres (13 feet) high were also captured in the video.

Fireballs from the ceiling are seen falling on the head of one of the guests and slowly more orbs of fire keep hurtling from the ceiling towards the guests. The bride and the groom who were dancing, also startled, stopped dancing and headed for the exit.

While the bride and groom, Haneen and Revan, respectively, survived the blaze, hundreds of guests who joined them to watch them tie the knot were not so lucky. “Inside we are dead. We are numb. We are dead inside,” Revan was quoted as saying by Sky News.

One mayor and his fire chief are among five Iraqi officials sacked for “grave negligence”. Those attending the wedding were from a small Christian community near Mosul, a wedding hall with the capacity of no more than 400 people, but on that night there were at least over 900 people, Interior Minister Abdel Amir al-Shammari said, according to AFP.

General Saad Faleh is investigating the tragedy. He ordered the arrest of 14 people and four, including the venue’s owner, were directly responsible for installing the fireworks.

The Iraqi public are angered over the high death toll. Shammari said the Qaraqosh mayor, municipal director, tourism and recreation division head, chief of firefighting and security in Nineveh province’s Civil Defence corps have been fired.

“The mayor was negligent: the hall was built illegally on the land, but the mayor authorised its going into service, without the approval of other public agencies,” Shammari said. “Failures in the exercise of their duties” was also one of the reasons cited for their firing.

The minister further added that the hall’s owner, thinking that a short circuit had started the fire, cut the electricity and plunged the room into darkness, provoking “chaos, panic and a stampede”.