IO N IPT SC R SU B
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2011
Al-Afasi in Beirut for Arab social council meeting
MUHARRAM 14, 1433 AH
Syrians rally as forces poised for bloody assault
No: 15294
Pakistan take firm grip of opening test
150 Fils
5Blaze at 8 Kolkata 43 hospital kills 89
Fleeing staff abandon trapped patients KOLKATA: Fleeing medical staff abandoned patients to a fire that killed 89 people yesterday as smoke poured through the sevenstorey hospital in this city in eastern India, officials said. Six administrators were arrested. Dwellers of a nearby slum who first noticed the smoke and fire rushed to the AMRI Hospital to raise the alarm, but security guards kept them back, saying it was only a small blaze, witnesses said. It took firefighters in the city formerly known as Calcutta more than an hour to respond, said Pradeep Sarkar, a witness
whose uncle was hospitalized but was among those safely evacuated from the private facility. Some of the slum dwellers helped with the rescue. The neighborhood’s narrow streets apparently made it difficult for fire trucks to get close to the building and to bring in big hydraulic ladders. Eventually, they smashed through a main gate to make way for the ladders. Six hospital directors surrendered to police and were charged with culpable
homicide, according to police who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. Mamata Banerjee, chief minister of the state of West Bengal, ordered the hospital’s license withdrawn. The hospital denied that any safety measures were violated. “It was horrifying that the hospital authorities did not make any effort to rescue trapped patients,” said Subrata Mukherjee, West Bengal state minister for public health engineering. “Senior hospital authorities ran away after the fire broke out.” Rescuers pulled 73 bodies from the building and another 16 died of their injuries later, said Danayati Sen, a top Kolkata police official. Most of the deaths were due to smoke inhalation, rescue officials said. Four of the dead were staff members, hospital officials said. There were 160 patients in the 190-bed facility at the time, said Satyabrata Upadhyay, a senior vice president. One survivor told Indian television she was at the bedside of her mother, who was on a ventilator, when smoke started filling the room. “I kept ringing the bell for the nurse, but no one came,” she said, adding that rescuers managed to evacuate her mother more than two hours after the fire started. Rescue workers on long ladders smashed windows in the upper floors to get to trapped patients before they suffocated from the smoke as sobbing relatives waited on the street. Patients were removed on stretchers and in wheelchairs to a nearby hospital. Patients and relatives complained that hospital staff did little to help and that smoke detectors failed to go off. —AP
KOLKATA: A crowd gathers to watch rescue operations outside the AMRI hospital that caught fire in Kolkata yesterday. (Above) Rescue workers use ropes to evacuate people. —AP
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DOHA: Arabic Calligraphy of “In the Name of God the Beneficent the Merciful” decorates the Sheikh Khalifa stadium during the opening ceremony of the pan-Arab Games in the Qatari capital yesterday. More than 5,000 Arab athletes are participating in the Arab games from December 9 to 24. — AFP
Iran issues a veiled threat By A Saleh KUWAIT: Well-informed security sources said that Kuwait as well as other GCC states, recently received direct threats from Iran of strikes against their territories if they assist US troops, or their allies, in launching hostilities against Iranian soil. The sources added that the concerned authorities in GCC states took the threats seriously, despite the fact that they had already announced that they would not assist Washington or others in launching military offensives against Iran. “Such threats will be thoroughly discussed on the 19th GCC Summit, due to be held in Riyadh on December 19,” stressed the sources, noting that Iran believes that the US has already started supplying GCC states with highly sophisticated military equipment in preparation for a strike.