Fire ravaged the maternity and neonatal intensive care unit of a hospital in Saudi Arabia early Thursday, killing at least 31 people including five Pakistanis and injuring more than 160 in the third mass calamity to hit the desert kingdom in the past four months.
The blaze, which Saudi news media said may have been started by an electrical problem, left part of the general hospital in Jizan, a southwest port city, in blackened ruins. At least one of the dead was a child, and Saudi television quoted a witness as saying he could “hear the women screaming” as flames raced through the ground-floor ward.
The hospital had been cited previously for safety violations, the state-owned Al Arabiya news channel reported. It quoted the region’s director of health affairs, Ahmed al-Sahli, as denying that the facility had any safety problems. He was also quoted as saying the cause of the fire had yet to be determined and that many people had escaped.But his remarks were later overtaken by a statement from his boss, Health Minister Khalid al-Falih, who acknowledged responsibility in saying that something had gone terribly wrong. “When we have deaths like this number, there is no doubt that there is a failure in the system of the Ministry of Health, and we would like to ensure that this will not occur again at any other hospital,” Reuters quoted his statement as saying.Twenty-one ambulances and fire units were sent to the hospital after an emergency call at 2:10 a.m., according to a Facebook post by the Saudi Civil Defense Directorate, which attributed the information to Maj. Yahya bin Abdullah al-Qahtani, the agency’s spokesman in the area.
The fire also injured at least 107 people, the agency said on Twitter. The official Saudi Press Agency later reported that 57 patients had been discharged from other hospitals, while another eight were in intensive care.
A correspondent for Al-Arabiya reported having seen several emergency doors chained shut after the disaster. Al-Arabiya also quoted Eissa Amaish, the sister of one victim, as saying, “What happened in this hospital was a crime of murder. This hospital was not equipped at all to deal with a fire.”
While there is great reluctance in Saudi Arabia to criticize the ruling royal family and public officials, the hospital fire nonetheless raised new questions about negligence and accountability when an apparently avoidable calamity occurs.
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