Fire destroys medicine store at Basra teaching hospital

BASRA — A fire tore through the medicine warehouse at al-Fayhaa Teaching Hospital in central Basra on Sunday, burning its contents, with 25 firefighting teams sent to put it out and no casualties reported, the Civil Defense Directorate said.

The fire started inside the hospital’s medicine store and destroyed what was held there, a security source told 964media. “The preliminary inspection indicates that the incident was caused by an electrical short circuit,” the source said, with an investigation opened to establish the circumstances and assess the damage.

Civil Defense said 25 specialized and support teams tackled the blaze from several directions with firefighting vehicles and ladder trucks to stop it spreading, and that the site was secured. It has requested a formal investigation through the local police station and called in a forensic expert to take samples and determine the technical cause.

It is the third fire in five days that authorities have linked to electrical faults. Eight teams contained a fire at a restaurant in Baghdad’s Atifiyah area on Saturday, where the directorate said the premises had breached safety requirements, and teams rescued 12 people on Wednesday from a four-storey building in Dora, where the cause was given as a fault in the main distribution panel.