A PALACE official on Sunday said the Philippine government is still identifying the 13 Filipinos who died after a blaze consumed the Capitol Hotel in Erbil, Iraq.
Communications Secretary Herminio B. Coloma Jr. said in a radio interview Philippine Chargé d’Affaires to Baghdad Elmer Cato is coordinating with officials of Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government.
In Filipino, Coloma said the government is sharing the sadness over the fate of the 13, not 14 as initially reported. He added also in Filipino the government is ready to help the victims’ families.
“The victims, all females, were suffocated by the smoke while trying to find their way out in the darkness. Six other persons lost their lives in the tragedy,” Cato said in a separate radio interview.
“It’s been a long day for us since arriving in Erbil this morning,” said Cato, who arrived at Erbil International Airport in the morning of February 6. “The Kurdistan Regional Government has ruled out terrorism in the incident. Investigators said faulty wiring triggered a fire at the basement level of the hotel where our kababayan were working.”
Cato said government officials are hoping they could identify the victims by February 8. “We are hoping that we could finish the difficult process so that we could immediately reunite them with their loved ones in the Philippines.”
Cato also called on family members in the Philippines who have relatives working in the Capitol Hotel to get in touch with the Department of Foreign Affairs to check the situation of their relatives.
He said there are about 1,500 Filipinos working in Kurdistan, most of them employed as hotel and restaurant workers, engineers, nurses and household service workers.
Nawzad Hadi, the governor of Irbil, was quoted by news media as saying the fire broke out in the sauna of the Hotel Capitol at 4 p.m. on Friday afternoon. He said the victims were identified as from the Philippines, three were Iraqis and one was Palestinian.
The fire took place at the four-star Capitol Hotel where rooms cost from $100 to $240 per night.
The hotel’s web site says it has a 740-square-meter (2,580-square-foot) spa that includes saunas and a pool.
Many foreign workers came to Kurdistan after 2003, when the region experienced an oil-fueled economic boom, inviting comparisons with the Gulf emirate of Dubai.
The Kurdistan region in north Iraq has largely been spared the deadly violence that plagues other parts of the country.
The region is frequently visited by tourists from other areas of Iraq and various countries in the region.
Photos and video posted on social media showed dark grey smoke pouring from windows on the top floor of the building.
In July 2010 a hotel fire in Sulaimani, another main Kurdish city in Iraqi Kurdistan, killed 30 people.