11 premature babies lost in Iraq hospital fire

Seven other babies and 29 women were rescued from the Yarmuk hospital’s maternity ward and transferred to another hospital, the ministry said in a statement. Firefighters took three hours to put out the blaze that engulfed the ward, according to a medical staffer. Yarmuk is main hospital on the western side of the capital, with emergency care and teaching facilities among others. The incident will intensify public accusations of state corruption and mismanagement. Images on social media showed the hospital in a state of neglect, with cockroaches crawling out from between broken tiles, dustbins overflowing with rubbish, dirty toilets and patients lying on stretchers in the courtyard. The kin of a patient who died there recently from meningitis said he saw cockroach crawling along the tube of an oxygen mask.