Fire, Building Collapse Injures 20 People in Baghdad

By Staff, Agencies

More than two dozen people were injured, including the head of Iraq's civil defense directorate, when a commercial building in the capital caught fire and then collapsed Sunday, authorities and the state news agency reported.

The official Iraqi News Agency said the civil defense director, Major General Kadhim Bohan, and some firefighters were among those injured when the burning building collapsed.

No deaths were reported. No information was immediately available on the cause of the blaze.

Brigadier General Qusai Younis, director of civil defense for the al-Rusafa district of Baghdad, told The Associated Press that at least 28 people had been injured.

He said two of the three stories in the building, which contained warehouses storing flammable materials such as perfume, collapsed due to the fire.

The civil defense announced late Sunday evening that the fire had been fully extinguished and first responders were searching for missing people at the scene.

On October 29, a gas tanker exploded near a soccer field in northeastern Baghdad, killing at least nine people and injuring 10 others. The explosion was found by an investigative committee to be an accident.