The collapse of a building in the Karrada district of the capital city of Baghdad on Saturday, according to Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kazemi, who has come under fire for his anti-corruption efforts. He ordered the Iraqi Civil Defense to make every effort to free those who are trapped and to launch an investigation into the accident’s circumstances.
According to a message from Al-Kazemi on the social media platform Twitter, “We have directed the Civil Defense to deploy maximum efforts to rescue individuals trapped in the fallen building, asking that God grant them health,” according to the Iraqi News Agency (INA).
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The occurrence “confirms the validity of anti-corruption activities and stops the awarding of arbitrary holidays,” he continued, adding that “We directed the beginning of an investigation into the incident and the leave provided in past governments.” Unfortunately, I received a lot of flak for it.
On the other hand, Ammar al-Hakim, the leader of the Iraqi National Wisdom Movement, demanded today that the accident’s circumstances be looked into.
Al-Hakim urged the responsible authorities to launch an investigation into the circumstances and causes of the tragic accident in a tweet on the microblogging website (Twitter). “With great concern, we followed the disaster of the collapse of a building in Al-Wathiq Square in the centre of the capital, Baghdad, and as we value the efforts of the Civil Defense in the process of rescuing people trapped under the rubble,” he wrote.
We urge the requirement of stringent safety measures and the issuing of building permits for structures and their adherence to the necessary standards, he continued.
The Iraqi Civil Defense Directorate, on the other hand, said that 13 people had been recovered from the wreckage of the Karrada building, and that rescue efforts were still ongoing. It also noted that blocked highways prevented its specialised teams from getting to the scene of the tragedy.
The four-story Karrada building, which has both residential and business space, has nearly collapsed, according to Nawas Sabah, director of media for Iraqi Civil Defense.
The civil defence teams are fully deployed, he continued, adding that road blockages had a significant impact on the arrival of all personnel.
He noted that the operation requires the arrival of heavy lifting equipment to the site in order to begin lifting the concrete blocks, but road blocks hampered the arrival of the second specialised teams. He then described how some of the directorate’s teams arrived at the accident site and dealt with the operations of lifting concrete blocks and searching for survivors or victims.
Iraqi Prime Minister: The building’s fall validates the effectiveness of anti-corruption initiatives.
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