KUWAIT CITY: Forty-nine people have died in a major blaze in a residential building housing foreign workers in Kuwait, the interior ministry said on Wednesday, updating an earlier toll.
"The number of deaths as a result of the fire in the workers' building in the Mangaf area has risen to 49," the ministry said.
Forty-three people were injured, the health ministry said, in the blaze in the Mangaf area south of Kuwait City which is heavily populated with migrant labourers.
"Unfortunately, we received a report of a fire at... exactly 6:00 am in the Mangaf area," Major General Eid Al Owaihan, head of the interior ministry's General Department of Criminal Evidence, said at the site.
Images from the scene showed soot blackening the exterior of the six-storey building which housed 196 workers, according to information given to the minister by their employer.
An Egyptian who survived the fire and worked as a driver in Kuwait, told local media the fire had started on a lower floor and that those on higher levels were unable to escape. He said the building had filled with thick smoke.
According to a source in the General Fire Department, the victims suffocated from rising smoke after the fire broke out on the ground floor.
Forensic teams are working at the site and have identified three bodies so far, Owaihan said.
The nationalities of the victims have not been announced but the Indian ambassador, when contacted by reporters, said he was at the hospital visiting survivors.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi described news of the fire as saddening in a post on social media platform X.
"My thoughts are with all those who have lost their near and dear ones. I pray that the injured recover at the earliest," he said.
The building's owner has been detained in an investigation into potential negligence, Interior Minister Shaikh Fahd Al Yousef said as he visited the scene.
Any properties found to have violated safety regulations will be evacuated immediately, he warned.
"We will work to address the issue of labour overcrowding and neglect," the minister said. "We will detain the owner of the property where the fire broke out until legal procedures are completed."
The blaze is one of the worst seen in Kuwait, which borders Iraq and Saudi Arabia. — Reuters
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