Region

QARAQOSH — Survivors of a fire that tore through an Iraqi wedding and those mourning the at least 100 lives lost filled the pews for a Christian mass Thursday, two days after the disaster.

Mourners wept or quietly embraced one another under the arches of the Syriac Catholic church of Al-Tahera, where portraits of the dead lined the stairs, showing men, women and children of all ages.

"I don't know what to say; there is pain in our hearts, a tragedy that will never be forgotten," said Najiba Yuhana, 55, who lost multiple relatives. "There is anger and sadness that is indescribable and without compare."

Authorities have blamed indoor fireworks that set alight ceiling decorations for the fire that quickly engulfed the reception hall constructed from highly combustible building materials.

At least 150 people suffered burns, smoke inhalation or crush injuries sustained in the stampede when the nearly 900 panicked guests tried to escape through the hall’s few exits.

Some of those killed were buried on Wednesday, but more funerals are planned for coming days.

Both bride and groom survived the fire, their “minor burns” far outweighed by the crushing blow of losing so many family members, a friend of the couple, Jamil al-Jamil, told AFP.

“The bride lost her whole family — three brothers, all of her uncles and her young cousins. The groom lost his mother,” Jamil said.

Fourteen arrests 

The disaster hit the town of Qaraqosh, a centre of Iraq’s small Christian community in the Nineveh Plains near Mosul, which is still recovering from the terrors of the Daesh group’s rule from 2014 to 2017.

The town, also known as Hamdaniyah, is now home to 26,000 Christians — half of its original population.

At the church, which Pope Francis visited in March 2021, many of the bereaved sobbed quietly, joined by a few survivors with bandaged wounds.

Prime Minister Mohamed Shia Al Sudani, who has declared three days of national mourning, travelled to the province on Thursday to visit “the injured and the families of the victims”, his office said.

Sudani demanded “the toughest punishments permitted by law for those responsible for negligence or failings that led to this tragic fire”.

Anger has flared over the high death toll, which authorities have blamed in part on poorly observed safety regulations, an insufficient number of fire exits and the use of highly flammable building materials.

Authorities have arrested 14 people — the venue’s owner and 10 employees as well as three people suspected of having set off the fireworks, the interior minister said.

‘Joy to sadness’ 

Safety standards are often poorly observed in Iraq, a country still recovering from decades of dictatorship, war and unrest that remains plagued by corruption, mismanagement and often dilapidated infrastructure.

In 2021, dozens of people were killed in two separate fires that raged through hospital wards.

A previous major tragedy struck Mosul in 2019, when at least 100 people, mostly women and children, died when an overcrowded ferry sank in the Tigris River.

Among the mourners at the Al Tahera church was Riad Bahnam, 53, who came to pray for his sister-in-law and his six-year-old great-niece, both of whom died in the flames.

He likened the fire to “the tragedy of the boat in Mosul” and said the wedding had been a moment of “joy which turned into sadness and anger”.

Bahnam voiced anger at the “human error” he blamed for the deadly tragedy that heaped suffering on the small community.

Any official “who has committed negligence in giving the required authorisations to the owner is also responsible”, he charged.

“They are supposed to demand compliance with safety standards.”

RABAT — Morocco has voiced ambitious plans to become North Africa's top player in the emerging "green hydrogen" sector, with plans to export the clean-burning fuel to Europe.

Hydrogen is seen as a clean energy source that can help the world phase out fossil fuels and reduce atmospheric carbon emissions in the battle to slow global warming. 

Morocco, which already runs large solar power plants, also hopes to harness green hydrogen — the kind made without burning fossil fuels —for its sizeable fertiliser sector.

Around 6,000 square kilometres of public land — nearly the size of Kuwait — have been set aside for green hydrogen and ammonia plants, the economy ministry says.

King Mohammed VI has hailed a national green hydrogen plan dubbed l'Offre Maroc (the Moroccan Offer) and called for its "rapid and qualitative implementation".

Speaking in July, before the country's earthquake disaster, he said Morocco must take advantage of "the projects supported by international investors in this promising sector".

Local media have reported about investment plans by Australian, British, French, German and Indian companies. 

Fertiliser sales 

Hydrogen can be extracted from water by passing a strong electrical current through it. 

This separates the hydrogen from the oxygen, a process called electrolysis.

If the power used is clean — such as solar or wind — the fuel is called "green hydrogen", which is itself emission-free when burnt.

But there are problems: hydrogen is highly explosive and hard to store and transport. This has set back hydrogen fuel cell cars in the race against electric vehicles using lithium-ion batteries. 

However, experts say green hydrogen also has a big role to play in de-carbonising energy-intensive industries that cannot easily be electrified such as steel, cement and chemicals.

Powering blast furnaces with hydrogen, for example, offers the promise of making "green steel".

Hydrogen can also be converted into ammonia, to store the energy or as a major input in synthetic fertilisers.

Morocco is already a major player in the global fertiliser market, thanks mainly to its immense phosphate reserves. 

It profited after fertiliser shortages sparked by Russia's invasion of Ukraine sent prices up to 1,000 euros ($1,060) per tonne.

Morocco's state Phosphate Office has announced plans to quickly produce a million tonnes of "green ammonia" from green hydrogen and triple the amount by 2032.

Solar power 

Analysts caution that Morocco still has some way to go with its ambitious green fertiliser plans.

The sector is "embryonic and the large global projects will not see the light of day until three to five years from now", said Samir Rachidi, director of the Moroccan research institute IRESEN.

Morocco's advantage is that it has already bet heavily on clean energy over the past 15 years.

Solar, wind and other clean energy make up 38 per cent of production, and the goal is to reach 52 per cent by 2030.

For now green hydrogen is more expensive than the highly polluting "brown hydrogen" made using coal or "grey hydrogen" produced from natural gas.

The goal is to keep green hydrogen production below $1-$2 per kilogramme, Ahmed Reda Chami, president of the Economic, Social and Environmental Counsel, told the weekly La Vie Eco.

Rachidi of IRESEN said water-scarce Morocco must also step up the desalination of seawater for the process.

It must build "an industrial value chain which begins with seawater desalinisation plants for electrolysis, electricity storage, to transportation and hydrogen marketing", he said.

Already hit by droughts that threaten its farm sector, Morocco has announced plans to add seven de-salinisation plants to its 12 existing facilities. 

Regional contest 

Morocco is competing on green hydrogen with other regional countries from Egypt to Mauritania.

Business consultants Deloitte have predicted that North Africa will be the world's largest green hydrogen-exporting region by 2050, reshuffling the global energy cards.

Algeria, a major fossil fuel exporter, can capitalise on "one of the most important potentials in the world" in terms of solar and wind energy and gas pipeline infrastructure, said Rabah Sellami, director of its Renewable Energies Commission.

Currently, Algeria produces only 3 per cent of its electricity through renewables, but is investing heavily to boost capacity. 

Algeria has numerous de-salinisation plants whose capacity is set to more than double to 2 billion cubic metres in 2030.

Its roadmap for green hydrogen targets "production of 1 million tonnes for export to the European market" and 250,000 tonnes for domestic consumption, said Sellami.

Tunisia also wants to enter the fray, provided it can build up its renewables production, said its energy ministry's general director Belhassen Chiboub.

It hopes to grow clean power output from three per cent now to 35 per cent by 2030.

If it meets that target, Chiboub predicted, "it will be able to export between 5.5 and 6 million tonnes of green hydrogen to Europe by 2050".

QARAQOSH, Iraq — At least 100 people were killed when a fire ripped through a crowded Iraqi wedding hall, officials said on Wednesday, pointing to indoor fireworks as the likely cause for the blaze that sparked a panicked stampede for the exits.

More than 150 people were injured by the flames, the choking smoke or in the crush to flee the reception hall, which was reduced to charred debris and piles of twisted furniture under a partially collapsed ceiling.

"I thought there had been an explosion," said Martin Idriss, 19, who was working in the kitchen when the fire broke out Tuesday evening in the venue in the mainly Christian northern city of Qaraqosh.

"The flames were devouring the whole hall," he said.

"When I went back in, I saw the charred bodies of three children," he said, adding the venue's emergency exits had proved "inadequate" for the hundreds of guests trying to escape.

Early reports and unverified video footage online suggested flares shot up sparkling flames that ignited ceiling decorations before the fire engulfed highly flammable construction materials.

Health authorities "counted 100 dead and more than 150 injured in the fire at a marriage hall in Hamdaniyah", as the city is also known, Iraq's official INA news agency reported in what it called a "preliminary tally".

The casualty toll was confirmed to AFP by health ministry spokesman Saif Al Badr, who said most of the injured were being treated for burns, oxygen deprivation and crush injuries.

But the director of health services in Nineveh, Mansour Marouf, on Wednesday afternoon said 94 people had died, with their bodies transported to different hospitals.

Only 30 of those had been immediately identified by their families, he told a news conference.

The Iraqi Red Crescent meanwhile reported more than 450 casualties, without providing a breakdown of deaths and injuries.

Wedding guest Rania Waad, 17, who suffered burns to her hand, said that as the bride and groom “were slow dancing, the fireworks [flames] started to climb to the ceiling [and] the whole hall went up in flames”.

“We couldn’t see anything,” she said, choking back sobs. “We were suffocating. We didn’t know how to get out.”

At the city’s main hospital, an AFP photographer saw ambulances with sirens blaring and dozens of people gathering to donate blood, while bodies in black bags were being loaded onto a refrigerated truck.

On Wednesday, police and firefighters sifted through the charred remains of the reception hall where mangled metal chairs lay strewn amid the debris.

Civil defence authorities said the hall had been fitted with prefabricated panels that were “highly flammable and contravened safety standards”.

The danger was compounded by the “release of toxic gases linked to the combustion of the panels”, which contained plastic, they said in a statement.

“Preliminary information” suggested indoor fireworks had ignited the blaze, they said.

Nine of the venue’s staff were arrested and arrest warrants issued for its four owners, interior ministry spokesman General Saad Maan told AFP.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohamed Shia Al Sudani declared three days of national mourning.

He also ordered “intensified periodic inspections” of entertainment venues nationwide to “ensure that safety measures are followed” and to “identify any non-compliant buildings”.

Safety standards in Iraq’s construction sector are often disregarded, and the country, whose infrastructure is in disrepair after decades of conflict, is often the scene of fatal fires and accidents.

In July 2021, a fire in hospital COVID unit killed more than 60 people in southern Iraq.

And in April of the same year, oxygen tanks exploded and triggered a fire at a Baghdad hospital also threating COVID patients, killing more than 80 people.

Qaraqosh, like many Christian cities in the Nineveh Plains northeast of Mosul, was ransacked by extremists of the Daesh group after they entered the city in 2014.

The city and its churches were slowly rebuilt after the group’s ouster in 2017, and Pope Francis visited it in March 2021.

RAMALLAH, Palestine — A Saudi envoy on a rare visit to the occupied West Bank pledged on Tuesday that the Palestinian cause will be "a cornerstone" of any normalisation deal the kingdom may strike with Israel.

The delegation headed by Nayef Al Sudairi was Saudi Arabia's first in three decades to the West Bank, which Israel has occupied along with other territories since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

The visit comes as Washington has urged its Middle East allies Saudi Arabia and Israel to normalise diplomatic relations, following on from similar deals involving the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco.

"The Palestinian matter is a fundamental pillar," Sudairi told journalists after meeting top Palestinian diplomat Riyad Al Maliki in Ramallah.

"And it's certain that the Arab initiative, which was presented by the kingdom in 2002, is a cornerstone of any upcoming deal."

The 2002 Peace Initiative proposed Arab relations with Israel in exchange for its withdrawal from the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza and the Golan Heights, and a just resolution for the Palestinians.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abba last week again stressed strong reservations to Arab countries building ties with Israel.

"Those who think that peace can prevail in the Middle East without the Palestinian people enjoying their full, legitimate national rights would be mistaken," Abbas told the UN General Assembly in New York.

'Getting closer' 

Sudairi, the Saudi envoy to Jordan, was last month also named ambassador for the Palestinian territories and consul general for Jerusalem.

His delegation, which crossed overland from Jordan, was the first from Saudi Arabia to visit the West Bank since the 1993 Oslo Accords, which had aimed to pave the way for an end to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

When asked whether there will be a Saudi embassy in Jerusalem, Sudairi recalled that there used to be a one in the Jerusalem district of Sheikh Jarrah, and said that "hopefully there will be an embassy there" again.

The Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, last week told US network Fox that the kingdom was getting "closer" to a deal with Israel but insisted that the Palestinian cause remains "very important" for Riyadh.

In recent months Israel has sent delegations to Saudi Arabia to participate in sports and other events, including a UNESCO meeting.

Meanwhile, Israel’s Tourism Minister Haim Katz arrived in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for the first such high-level public visit to the kingdom amid talks to secure bilateral ties.

“Katz is the first Israeli minister to head an official delegation in Saudi Arabia,” his ministry said in a statement, adding he would attend a United Nations World Tourism Organisation event in Riyadh.

‘Circle of peace’ 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the United Nations on Friday that he believes “we are at the cusp” of “a historic peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia”.

Speaking Tuesday at a ceremony to mark the 1973 Arab-Israeli war [October War] he said “many states in the Middle East want peace with Israel”.

“Increasing the circle of peace is a historic opportunity and I’m committed to it.”

The 1993 Oslo Accords were meant to lead to an independent Palestinian state, but years of stalled negotiations and deadly violence have left any peaceful resolution a distant dream.

Netanyahu’s hard-right government has been expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank which are deemed illegal under international law.

A recent escalation in violence has seen at least 242 Palestinians killed so far this year, according to official sources.

The United States, which has brokered talks between Israel and the Palestinians in the past, has made no major push toward a two-state solution since a failed effort nearly a decade ago.