A fire broke out on Wednesday in a building housing many low-income workers, mostly migrants from India, in the Persian Gulf state of Kuwait, killing at least 49 people and injuring dozens, the state news agency reported.
The Kuwaiti state news agency said the fire broke out in the morning in a coastal area called Mangaf, about 30 minutes’ drive from the centre of the capital, Kuwait City.
Kuwaiti authorities are investigating the cause of the fire and are detaining the building’s owner for questioning to determine whether “any defects or negligence” was to blame, the state news agency reported. Authorities also promised to launch a campaign to investigate and eradicate violations of building codes and said the cause of the fire was under investigation.
Speaking to reporters at the scene, Kuwait’s Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Fahad Yousaf Al Sabah blamed the tragedy on corporate greed and said owners of the companies employing the workers would also be detained, Reuters and Kuwaiti newspapers reported.
The high number of deaths from the fires highlighted the dangers faced by low-income migrants in the Gulf, who often work hard under exploitative contracts and live in overcrowded housing with limited or poorly enforced regulatory protections. Foreigners make up about two-thirds of Kuwait’s population, many of them low-wage workers from South Asian countries who work a variety of essential jobs, including construction, restaurant service and street cleaning.
Kuwait’s Public Labor Authority, which oversees labor regulations, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Many of the workers affected by the fire were migrants from India, the Indian Embassy said in a social media post. The Indian Ambassador to Kuwait Adarsh Suwaika on Wednesday visited several hospitals where dozens of injured workers were taken, the embassy said. That post.
Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said he was “deeply shocked” by news of the fire.
“We are awaiting further information,” Jaishankar said. On social media“Our embassy will provide maximum assistance to all concerned in this regard.”
Kuwaiti newspapers carried video showing the first floor of the seven-story building engulfed in flames and black smoke pouring from the windows.
Another video published by a Kuwaiti newspaper showed Sheikh Fahd questioning an unidentified man at the scene of the fire about who lived in the building, to which the man replied that 196 people lived there.
Kuwait’s state-run News Agency said officials from the local municipality in charge of the area had been suspended pending an investigation. Building codes in the Gulf state are often laxly enforced.
“In buildings like this you are supposed to go to the roof, but unfortunately the door to the roof was locked,” Colonel Saeed Hassan Al Musawi, a Kuwaiti firefighter, said in an interview with local television.
Instead, he said, workers were overwhelmed by smoke.
A sign on the building identified it as a workers’ camp for NBTC Group, a Kuwait-based contracting company that operates in construction, industry, logistics and related sectors. Calls to the company went unanswered on Wednesday, and an employee at its office said staff had been detained by authorities earlier in the day.
Yasmena Almra Contributed reporting from Kuwait.
