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At least 100 people were killed in Iraq and 150 injured last night in a fire during a wedding at a festival hall in Hamdania, a small town in the north of the country, health authorities said.

At Hamdania's main hospital, a small, mostly Christian town east of Mosul, an AFP photographer saw several ambulances with sirens howling.

According to the same source, dozens of people gathered in the yard of the hospital - relatives of the victims and locals who came to donate blood.

Health authorities in Nineveh, the province where Hamdania is located, "counted 100 dead and more than 150 injured in the fire in the wedding hall in Hamdania," the official Iraqi news agency INA reported.

A fire broke out in Istanbul. A man was killed, another man was injured.

"Preliminary information indicates that fireworks were used during a wedding that caused a fire in the hall," the civil protection service said in a statement. The ceiling in the hall where the tragedy occurred was made of prefabricated panels that were "highly flammable and contrary to safety standards", the service said.

Dead and injured

fire

Iraq

wedding