Baghdad restaurant fire contained after eight crews deployed

BAGHDAD — Eight firefighting teams contained a fire at a restaurant in Baghdad’s Atifiyah area on Saturday, with no injuries reported, and the Civil Defense Directorate said the premises had not complied with safety requirements.

The fire started in a second-floor storage area holding plastic materials used for takeaway food, the directorate said. Eight specialized and support teams and a ladder truck responded, controlling and extinguishing it “within minutes” and stopping it spreading to neighbouring buildings. Damage was confined to property.

The directorate said the restaurant “was in violation of safety conditions and Civil Defense requirements,” without specifying what the breaches were. It has opened an investigation and called in a forensic expert to establish the cause.

It is the second building fire in Baghdad this week. Civil Defense teams rescued 12 people on Wednesday from a four-storey residential and commercial building in Dora, where the directorate attributed the blaze to an electrical fault in the main distribution panel.