Christian religious leaders in northern Iraq called on Monday for an international investigation into the Hamdaniya fire, with some considering the tragedy not an accident, but a "premeditated" act, without providing any evidence or details. In an interview from the town of Qaraqosh, Syro-Catholic priest Father Petros Sheto criticized the rampant corruption in the country and the control of armed militias over the government as factors that contributed to the outbreak of the fire. Without offering any evidence, Father Sheto, who lost family members in the fire that killed more than 100 people last week, stated that the fire was "deliberate."
Ten of Father Sheto's relatives, including his sister Faten Sheto, who had traveled from Arizona to attend a wedding, died as a result of the fire. He said, "We reject the idea that the fire was due to an accident. We are confident that it was deliberate, and thus we demand an international investigation."
Iraqi media reported that Chaldean Catholic Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako from Rome stated that the fire "was carried out by someone who sold his conscience and his nation for a specific agenda." Meanwhile, Aswan Al-Kldani, head of the Babylon parliamentary bloc, claimed that "Priest Louis Sako's statement regarding the Hamdaniya tragedy being fabricated is incorrect."
Sako left his headquarters in Baghdad in July and returned to the Kurdistan region after Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid revoked a decree recognizing him as Patriarch of the Chaldeans, the largest Christian denomination in Iraq. Benedictus Yonan Hanno, Archbishop of Mosul for the Syrian Catholics and a leader of the Iraqi Christian minority, also called for an investigation "under the supervision of international investigators," emphasizing that Iraqi Christians reject the results of the Iraqi investigation.
According to the investigation results announced by Interior Minister Abdul Amir Al-Shammari at a press conference on Sunday, the owner of the hall and three other employees allowed nine hundred guests to enter a venue that can only accommodate a maximum of four hundred. The investigation's findings stated that "the incident was accidental and unintentional, and there were shortcomings."
