Prabir Purkayastha was arrested last year after a New York Times investigation alleged his outlet was funded by a network pushing Chinese propaganda
A mayor and his fire chief are among five Iraqi officials sacked for "grave negligence" after a blaze that killed 107 people at a wedding last week, authorities said on Sunday.
The tragedy struck the northern Iraqi town of Qaraqosh, a centre of Iraq's small Christian community near Mosul, in a wedding hall with a capacity of "no more than 400 people", Interior Minister Abdel Amir Al Shammari told a press conference.
That night, it held in excess of 900 people, he said, confirming the blaze on the night of September 26 was an accident.
Public anger has flared over the high death toll, which General Saad Faleh, head of the commission investigating the tragedy, said currently stands at 107.
Shammari said those fired include: The mayor of Qaraqosh; the municipal director; the tourism and recreation division head; an electricity official; and the chief of firefighting and security in Nineveh province's Civil Defence corps.
The Civil Defence chief will face a disciplinary committee, Shammari added.
In addition to negligence the officials were fired for "failures in the exercise of their duties," he said.
"The mayor was negligent: The hall was built illegally on the land, but the mayor authorised its going into service, without the approval of other public agencies," the minister said.
Civil Defence had carried out an inspection of the site earlier this year and the owner was ordered to remove the ceiling by October because of its highly-flammable materials, he added.
ALSO READ:
The "main cause" of the fire was four fireworks that shot showers of sparks four metres high, Faleh said, adding that these ignited the prefabricated panels in the ceiling and also the hall's decorations.
Shammari said the hall's owner, thinking that a short circuit had started the fire, cut the electricity and plunged the room into darkness, provoking "chaos, panic and a stampede".
Of the 14 people arrested earlier by security forces, four, including the venue's owner, were directly responsible for installing the fireworks, Faleh said.
Both bride and groom survived the fire.
Safety standards are often poorly observed in Iraq, a country still recovering from decades of dictatorship, war and unrest that remains plagued by corruption, mismanagement and often dilapidated infrastructure.
Public discontent flared into a nationwide protest movement that began in October, 2019. Nearly 500 demonstrators gathered on Sunday in Baghdad's Tahrir Square to commemorate the anniversary, which police -- met with stones hurled by the protesters -- dispersed with sound grenades, an AFP photographer said.
Prabir Purkayastha was arrested last year after a New York Times investigation alleged his outlet was funded by a network pushing Chinese propaganda
The deportees were among hundreds of employees, Filipino and foreign, rounded up by an anti-crime government task force in a raid on March 14
NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured the bright flash of the X-ray flare — it was the strongest since 2005, rated on the scale for these flares as X8.7
The move comes amid a temporary halt in the shipment of 2,000-pound bombs and 500-pound bombs by the US to Israel
Waibhav Anil Kale, who worked for the UN, died while travelling in a vehicle to a hospital in the Khan Younis area from Rafah
The proportion reached its highest levels during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021
Since Friday, the most powerful solar storm to strike our planet in more than two decades has lit up night skies
CCTV footage played during the trial showed Kuandyk Bishimbayev punching and kicking his wife, who was later found dead