Incidents raise safety concerns
Erbil, Sulaymaniyah witness same-day fatal construction site accidents
ERBIL — A 34-year-old construction worker, Saad Hazim Mohammed, died on Sunday after falling from a building in Erbil. Mohammed, a father of four from Banenan village in Duhok’s Bardarash district, fell from the fourth floor of a building in the Azadi neighborhood.
Habib Goran, a relative of the victim, told 964media that Mohammed had worked in construction for nearly 12 years and was commuting daily between his village and Erbil. The cause of the fall is under investigation.
In a separate incident, two Syrian construction workers died in Sulaymaniyah on Sunday after a crane malfunction at a residential project in the Qularaisy neighborhood. The workers fell from the 15th floor and died instantly. Two other workers on the ground sustained injuries.
Saman Nader, a representative from the Sulaymaniyah Emergency Response Center, confirmed the deaths and said the bodies had been transferred to forensics. The deceased were identified as being born in 2005 and 1975.
This is the second deadly accident at the same Sulaymaniyah project site in the past year. Last year, a similar accident resulted in the deaths of three workers and injured eight.
The Kurdistan Workers’ Union has reported a concerning number of workplace fatalities in recent years. In 2023, there were 53 worker deaths, with 39 local workers and 14 foreign workers among the deceased. In 2022, 41 workers lost their lives in workplace incidents.