Saudi Arabia hospital fire: 25 killed and over 100 injured

There was no Indian casualty in a hospital fire in Saudi Arabia that killed 25 people and injured 107 others, the external affairs ministry has said.

The fire-which one witness says spread through the hospital in only minutes-occurred in the city of Jazan, one of the poorest areas in the country.

The blaze broke out in the intensive care unit (ICU) and the Maternity Department of the hospital in the south of the kingdom, the Civil Defence Agency tweeted.

At least 31 killed and more than 100 injured in blaze in Jizan, which began on floor housing ICU and maternity ward.

Photographs published on Twitter by the civil defence agency showed heavy smoke and an intense blaze which appeared to have severely damaged the interior of the white-walled hospital. The teams were able to evacuate the children and patients from the intensive care unit, the Health Ministry said on its Twitter account.

Some 21 civil defence teams helped extinguish the fire, according to the agency.

Dr. Ahmad Alsum, an emergency doctor at Jizan’s King Fahd Hospital, said that most of those injured in the fire were patients.

Some Saudis took to social media to complain of what they said was inadequate infrastructure in the area. In August, fire swept through an oil workers’ residential compound in the town of Khobar, killing 10 people. Photos released by the state-run Saudi Press Agency showed that the blaze had badly damaged some of the rooms in the hospital.

Criticism of Saudi Arabia’s ruling family is frowned upon, but a string of comments by Twitter users suggested the fire was the result of official negligence and criticized a series of accidents at public facilities in the kingdom this year.

Others called for Health Minister Khalid al-Falih to be sacked.

Jazan is near the border with Yemen, which has seen months of fighting between Houthi rebels and Saudi-backed forces.