Four people were killed and at least eight people, including foreign workers, were injured after a building that housed a restaurant collapsed Sunday morning in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, medical and security sources told AFP.
A Civil Defense source told the news agency that the two-story building collapsed as a result of an explosion caused by a gas leak at the Layla Restaurant, which appeared to be empty at this time of day, in the Jadriyah area of the city’s inner city, Baghdad.
Meanwhile, several sources said that the gas system in a restaurant on Al-Wazir Street in the Jadriyah, a neighborhood in the capital of Iraq, exploded in a three-story building, causing its complete collapse.
They mentioned that civil defense teams were able to retrieve from the rubble four bodies of restaurant workers, after more than four hours of rescue.
“Four people died in the accident and eight were injured, including workers from Bangladesh,” a police source told AFP.
A medical source also confirmed that the hospital accepted the bodies of four people and treated the wounded.
The explosion caused the entire building to collapse, blocking the exit of workers from the building’s basement, which is used as a kitchen.
Photos of the complete collapse of the building where then shared on social networks.
Most buildings in Baghdad, with a population of around ten million people, lack security measures, causing accidents and loss of life when they occur, while large commercial centers in Baghdad witness fires that sometimes result in injury in addition to great property loss.
Last year, about 150 people died in two hospital fires, one in the south and another near the capital, exacerbated by a lack of necessary security measures.
