Qatar shopping centre blaze leaves 19 dead

29 May 2012, 8:03 am   -   Source: AFP, AAP
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A fire that erupted in a huge shopping centre the  Qatari capital of Doha killed 19 people including 13 children, three of them believed to be New Zealand triplets.

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A fire that erupted in a huge shopping centre the  Qatari capital of Doha killed 19 people including 13 children.

Firefighters didn't know where the nursery was which caught fire in Qatar, says a New Zealander who was at the scene where three New Zealand children are believed to have been among 19 killed on Monday.

The New Zealand Herald says the New Zealand children are believed to be two-year-old triplets.

Seven girls, six boys, four teachers and two firefighters were believed to have died from smoke inhalation.

Former New Zealand journalist Tarek Bazley was in the Doha mall when the fire broke out, saying he heard a benign alarm which sounded like a repeating doorbell, but he was told by an attendant that "it's usually a false alarm".

"About 10 minutes later someone else, a member of the public, raced through this area and said `everybody out, you've got to get out now, the other half of the mall is on fire'."

Mr Bazley understood there was no way to escape for those in the nursery as both entrances to the Gympanzee were blocked by smoke, and those that were rescued escaped through a hole in the roof cut by firefighters.

"The Ministry for the Interior, which runs the Civil Defence and the Fire Brigade, said they didn't know where that nursery was.

They had no plan of the mall," he said.

"In my estimation that's the first thing any fire brigade should know."

He said media were later told there had been some malfunctioning of both the alarm and the sprinkler system.

Reports from the Doha News and Al Jazeera suggest that there were also children from Spain, France, Japan, South Africa and the Philippines killed, along with three Filipino teachers and one teacher from Africa.

Unconfirmed reports said two managers were arrested and may face charges in court, Doha News reported.

Brian Chambers, New Zealand's consul in Saudi Arabia, is heading to Doha on Tuesday morning (local time) to offer assistance to families involved and the larger New Zealand community, believed to number about 500.
  
The fire broke out at a nursery, state minister for the interior Abdullah bin Nasser Al-Thani told reporters.
  
"The first report of fire at Villaggio was received by the operations centre at 11:02 am (0802 GMT)," he said, according to the QNA state news agency, pointing out that police and civil defence reached the site within minutes.
  
He said it became clear that "20 children were at the nursery in the complex and all efforts were concentrated on evacuating those kids," adding that firefighters had to break through the roof to get to trapped children after a staircase to the first-floor nursery collapsed.
  
Dense smoke inside the mall combined with the fierce temperature from the flames made reaching the trapped children very difficult, a civil defence representative told a news conference.
  
Health Minister Khaled al-Qahtani said all fatalities were caused by asphyxiation, adding that 17 people were injured, mostly firefighters.
  
Footage posted online showed black smoke billowing from the shopping centre as emergency vehicles rushed to the scene.
  
Al-Thani told reporters that the "public prosecution has taken charge of the investigation."
  
Crown Prince Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani ordered the setting up of a special commission to probe the deadly blaze, the Doha-based Al-Jazeera satellite television station reported.
  
In Madrid, a foreign ministry spokeswoman said: "Four of the dead children are Spanish," and added that Spanish embassy officials were trying to get more details.
  
Yamina Benguigui, the minister in charge of French expatriates, announced in Paris that a French child died in the blaze, but she declined to give any further details, including whether the victim was a boy or a girl.
  
"It is with great sorrow that I confirm that a French child aged three is among the victims," she said in a statement.
  
Villaggio Mall was opened in 2006. The Venetian-styled centre boasts a mall area of 125,000 square metres. Its main feature is a canal on which genuine gondolas ferry visitors through the mall.
  
Thanks to its wealth of oil and natural gas reserves, combined with a tiny population of less than two million, mostly foreigners, Qatar is one of the world's richest countries in terms of per capita income, coming second only to tiny Liechtenstein.

 

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