In one moment, Iraq lost a model family that represented hope for a brighter future. The Kut tragedy not only claimed lives, but also took from the country a young doctor who had just opened her clinic, her engineer husband, and their children, who died together in the Corniche hypermarket fire.

The family, a small Iraqi success story, chose a quiet evening to go shopping, and found themselves surrounded by flames and smoke on one of the floors of the tightly closed building. A life project that was completely extinguished in the flames of neglect, leaving behind an indelible societal trauma, and sad messages about the scale of daily losses in this country.

Activists on social media circulated a picture of the door of the clinic of the young doctor who died with her family in the Corniche Hypermarket fire, while it was closed and had a sign bearing the family’s obituary,” in a scene that summed up the enormity of the loss, as only days had passed since its opening.

According to the latest official toll, the number of victims of the fire has risen to 69 dead and 43 injured, while a number of people are still missing.

The Civil Defense Directorate attributed the cause of the fire to an electrical short circuit in the cooling devices on the ground floor, followed by an explosion in a perfume warehouse, which led to accelerated ignition and the spread of the fire to the rest of the floors, amid the absence of alarm and firefighting systems, and the lack of effective emergency exits.