The explosion of a gas cylinder started a fire in a residential area, injuring dozens and destroying several houses and vehicles.
The death toll from a gas cylinder explosion in a residential area of Sulaimaniyah, northern Iraq, has risen to 15.
The explosion on Thursday, which caused a house to collapse, also injured 16 people.
According to Sulaimaniyah’s civil defence, the rescue operation to find the victims lasted 17 hours.Firefighters were able to put out the fire that erupted after a gas cylinder exploded in the second-largest city in northern Iraq’s Kurdish region.
“A total of 15 bodies have been pulled out from under the rubble,” said the head of civil defence in the city, Diyar Ibrahim, according to the official Iraqi News Agency.
Ibrahim said search operations continued into the early hours of Friday, adding that there were no more bodies under the rubble.
The city’s emergency response chief, Saman Nader, blamed the blast on “a gas leak from a tank”.
Police said the fire damaged several houses and destroyed at least five vehicles. It also said at least three houses were destroyed by the explosion.
A cooking gas cylinder was installed on the rooftop of one of the homes in the residential area.
The governor of Sulaimaniyah province, Haval Abubaker, announced three days of mourning earlier on Friday. He added that at least one child was among the victims.
Masrour Barzani, prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government, has ordered an investigation.
Infrastructure tragedies are common in Iraq, which suffers from poorly enforced safety standards.
At the end of October, a gas tanker exploded in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, killing at least nine people and injuring several others, security forces said.