At least 49 people are dead after a fire ripped through a residential building housing foreign workers in Kuwait on Wednesday, according to Kuwait’s Ministry of Interior.
Video circulating on social media showed the moment the blaze engulfed the city’s six-story building in the Mafreg area.
Around 150 people lived in the block when the fire broke out on the ground floor, police official Sayyed Hasan Ebrahim told Kuwaiti state television.
The cause of the fire, which has been contained, is unknown but the presence of more than 20 cooking gas tanks and flammable material in the overcrowded block caused it to spread quickly, Ebrahim said.
Most of the fatalities were due to suffocation, Gen. Eid Rashed, from the police criminal forensic department, told state television. He warned the death toll could rise, adding that 11 people were being treated in hospitals.
Authorities had identified three of the bodies, he said, but did not say if their families had been notified.
A fire department official said the large number of floors and escape corridors made it difficult for the trapped residents to escape the burning building.
