A major fire broke out at the Al-Ittihad Hotel adjacent to the Cultural House in the middle of Karbala Governorate, Iraq. The Civil Defense Directorate announced that its teams rescued 60 guests of various nationalities due to the fire. The directorate stated in a statement that "Civil Defense teams successfully rescued sixty guests of different nationalities while simultaneously controlling and extinguishing the fire that erupted inside the four-story Al-Ittihad Hotel, parts of which are constructed with sandwich panels and fast-burning EcoBond cladding, violating the safety instructions issued by the Civil Defense Directorate in the holy province of Karbala."
It noted that "Civil Defense teams were mobilized and rushed to the incident site, surrounding the flames and isolating the burning hotel from adjacent hotels. They successfully carried out direct entry into the hotel building's floors, evacuating guests and workers and extinguishing the fire without registering any human injuries while minimizing material damages."
The statement added that "the cause of the incident was the ignition of a generator placed on the roof of the hotel, along with the burning of large quantities of fuel used for operation, which led to fuel spilling from the top to the bottom of the hotel building, spreading the fire in seconds." It further stated that "the Civil Defense Directorate considers this hotel one of the buildings that violate safety instructions and has referred it to judicial authorities according to Civil Defense Law No. 44 of 2013."
