SULAIMANI (ESTA) — The Iraqi health ministry on Monday announced seven deaths including a child after a landslide hit a Shiite Muslim shrine in the central Iraqi province of Kerbala.
A landslide, demolishing Qattarat al-Imam Ali, a Shiite Muslim shrine near the holy city of Kerbala on Saturday killed seven people and injured six others.
Rescuer teams said among the dead are four women, two men, and a child, the bodies have been recovered from the rubble.
The Qattarat al-Imam Ali shrine is located in the western desert, about 28 km from the center of the holy city of Kerbala.
So far, six survivors from the rubble were pulled out by the rescue workers from the debris.
Iraq’s President Barham Saleh called on the “heroic” rescue workers to “mobilize all efforts to save the trapped people”.
Initial information suggests that humidity had triggered the landslide, which hit the ceiling of the shrine and caused it to collapse, the civil defense service said in a statement.
The search and rescue operation is continuing in case more people remained buried under the rubble, INA reported.
