At least 82 people were killed and more than 100 were wounded in a fire that erupted out in a Baghdad hospital's coronavirus intensive care unit, eliciting outrage and causing the removal of top officials in a country with a lengthy and crumbled health system. According to medical reports, the Saturday night fire at the Ibn al-Khatib Hospital in Baghdad was triggered by an accident that led an oxygen tank to burst.

The Iraqi Human Rights Commission said 28 of the victims were patients who had to be pulled off ventilators to flee the flames, while the health ministry said 82 people died and 110 were wounded in the fire. According to civil defense officials, the flames spread rapidly because "the hospital had no fire safety system and false ceilings caused the flames to spread to extremely combustible objects."

In reaction to the fire, Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhemi suspended Health Minister Hassan al-Tamimi, amid angry social media demands for his dismissal, as part of an investigation that would also involve the governor of Baghdad. The prime minister has proclaimed three days of national mourning, and parliament announced that its Monday session would be for the disaster. During the fire, patients' families rushed to rescue their loved ones.

Ahmed Zaki, who came to visit his brother at the time of the incident, identified people leaping out of windows as the fire spread rapidly across the unit designed to treat COVID-19 patients. “At first, there was an explosion, People started jumping. Doctors collapsed on the cars.”

Al-Kadhimi dismissed the director-general of the Baghdad Health Department in the al-Rusafa district, where the hospital is housed, earlier on Sunday. According to a statement from the health ministry and his office, he also sacked the director of Ibh al-Khatib Hospital and its director of engineering and maintenance. According to a tweet on his Twitter account, al-Khadhimi scheduled an emergency meeting at the headquarters of the Baghdad Operations Command, which manages Iraqi security units shortly after the fire broke out.

“Negligence in such circumstances is not a mistake, but an offense for which all incompetent parties shall accept accountability,” he said. He gave Iraqi officials 24 hours to present the findings of an inquiry. The coronavirus epidemic has strained Iraq's already-strained healthcare system, which has been ravaged by decades of sanctions, conflict, and neglect. According to Al Jazeera's Simona Foltyn, reporting from Baghdad, the death toll is expected to increase because many of the wounded have serious burns.

At the time of the eruption, there were 30 patients and scores of families in the ICU, which was reserved for the serious COVID incidents. Social media videos show firefighters attempting to put out fires at the hospital in the southeastern suburbs of Baghdad, while patients and their families attempted to evacuate the site. Two doctors reported that the fire that raged across the hospital's second floor was ignited by an oxygen tank.

In Iraqi hospitals, there is normally no central supply of oxygen, so patients who require it are given a cylinder that is put next to their bed. Due to manpower shortages, relatives are often asked to change the cylinders, according to a doctor. “The bulk of the patients died because of moving and taken off ventilators, whilst the rest choked to death by smoke,” the civil defence said.

The health ministry said that it had "saved almost 200 patients." Despite the prime minister's announcement of an inquiry, the fire sparked outrage on social media.

“That is insufficient for Iraqis,” Foltyn said. “We often hear the government pledging prosecutions, but we seldom see the findings or government employees held accountable for what seems to be negligence or mismanagement.”

The attack, according to the government's human rights commission, was "a violation against patients battered by COVID-19 who put their lives in the care of the health ministry and its institutions and rather than being treated, died in the fire." Baghdad Governor Mohammed Jaber has asked the health ministry to “create a commission of inquiry so that those who failed to do their duties may be put on trial.”

In a tweet, UN envoy to Iraq Jeannine Hennis-Plasschaert voiced "shock and horror" over the accident and called for tighter hospital security measures. The estimated number of people contaminated with COVID-19 in Iraq is 102,528 people, with 15,217 deaths, according to the health ministry on Saturday.

Iraq introduced its coronavirus vaccination program last month and has collected nearly 650,000 doses of various vaccines, the bulk of which were donated or obtained via the COVAX scheme, which assists low- and middle-income countries in obtaining vaccines. Since the beginning of the pandemic, health officials have faced difficulty in convincing Iraqis to get vaccinated, owing to general scepticism about the vaccine and public unwillingness to wear masks.