(Kuwait) Fifty people, the majority of them Indians, died in a fire in a building housing foreign workers, Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Abdallah al-Yahya said on Thursday.
“One of the injured died yesterday evening or this morning,” the minister told the press, while the latest report given by the authorities indicated 49 deaths in the fire which broke out on Wednesday.
Asked about the nationalities of the victims, the head of Kuwaiti diplomacy indicated that “the majority of the dead are Indians”.
In Manila, the Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) reported the deaths of three Filipino workers.
Migrant Workers Secretary Hans Leo J. Cacdac said the three men, who died of smoke inhalation, were among a group of 11 Filipinos working for the same Kuwaiti construction company housed in the building which caught fire.
Two other Filipinos remain hospitalized in critical condition, while the other six are safe.
Abdallah al-Yahya said he met Indian Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Kirti Vardhan Singh, dispatched on Wednesday by New Delhi, to organize the repatriation of the victims.
“We are fully collaborating” with the Indian side on this subject, the Kuwaiti minister further indicated, adding that the bodies would be repatriated aboard “an Indian plane”.
The wealthy Gulf country has decided to pay compensation to the victims, the same official said, without giving further details.
The victims died of asphyxiation after inhaling the smoke released by the fire, the reasons for which have not yet been determined, according to Kuwaiti civil protection.
The fire, in the suburb of Mangaf, located south of the Kuwaiti capital, left around forty injured, according to the Interior Ministry.
The fire started on the lower floors of a building inhabited by Asian workers, witnesses said, and quickly spread to the upper floors.
The six-story building was used to house 196 workers, said an official with the company that employs them.
The owner of the building was arrested as part of an investigation into possible negligence, said Interior Minister Sheikh Fahd al-Youssef during his visit to the scene of the disaster on Wednesday.
