All the lights and lamps were off, except for a luminous circle inside which the bride and the groom were dancing to the rhythm of slow music.
A calm and romantic atmosphere prevailed in the hall, the eyes of no less than 700 people were focused only on the small circle of light decorated with roses and tiny lamps.
Saja Ismail and her husband were the last to arrive at the hall, elegant and smiling, their hands intertwined, all contemplating the scene with love.
They entered through one of the secondary small doors of the hall, and as they entered, the lights went out. A short conversation took place between them, the husband said to Saja, "Let's sit down," but Saja replied, "They are very beautiful, I want to watch this dance. Besides, it is dark now so we will be seated once the light is on again."
The whole scene took two minutes, then suddenly everything changed in 20 seconds, Saja says.
"I saw the Day of Judgment with my own eyes" a day that ended with the death of 125 people. This place is a wedding hall in the Hamdaniya district of Nineveh Province, Saja and her husband went to Hamdaniya from Dohuk Northern Province on September 26, 2023 to attend the wedding.
Back to the beginning of the story
On September 22, 2023, four days before the wedding day, while Saja was busy preparing food in the kitchen of her home in Dohuk, her husband's phone rang.
"After my husband answered the call, he came and sat at the dining table with a smile on his face." Saja asked him, "What's up? Did that call make you happy?"
Her husband replied, "That was my brother Arman, he says that we are invited to a wedding party in Hamdaniya on the 26th of this month." Saja said excitedly, "Oh, how happy, Revyan and Hanin are getting married, we are going to the wedding."
The families of Revyan and Saja are not relatives, but they got to know each other after they were displaced.
The two were displaced from Mosul and the Nineveh Plain to Dohuk Province during the attacks by the extremist militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria ISIS in June 2014, where they became neighbors. In fact, Saja's family is Muslim and Revyan's family is Christian, but their ties were warm.
After Nineveh Province was retaken from ISIS in late 2017, Revyan's family returned to Hamdaniya yet Saja stayed with her husband in Dohuk, and they kept in touch.
Saja and her husband's preparations for the wedding
Saja was very excited about the wedding party, and the day after receiving the invitation, she sat with her husband to choose the most beautiful outfit to wear to the party.
"I chose a light blue traditional Kurdish outfit that I found in my wardrobe. I had bought it two weeks ago, but my husband did not like it, especially since the party is held at night and the pictures might not look good because the outfit is light in color," according to Saja.
Although Saja says that men are not qualified when it comes to colors, she decided to buy a new Kurdish outfit. She chose the color and gave it to a tailor via WhatsApp. The outfit was ready on the morning of the wedding.
On the morning of the same day, September 26, Saja’s husband bought a suit to attend the party. Saja said, “I was very happy and busy getting ready. I could not prepare lunch, so ordered a home delivery.”
After lunch, they headed to Akre (Akri) district, where one of Saja’s sisters lives. Akre is much closer to Hamdaniya than Dohuk.
The couple decided to stay in Akre until 9 pm and then head to Hamdaniya.
Saja’s husband was wearing a black suit and a white shirt, while Saja tried on her new Kurdish outfit for the first time while she was at her sister’s house in Akre. The outfit was black and studded with yellow crystals. Saja was so happy that she did not know how to prepare herself without her sister’s help.
Saja's 11-year-old niece also wanted to attend the party, but her mother rejected because her sister will return late at night while her daughter had to go to bed early.
At 8:50 the couple left Akre.
"I was very hurt when I saw in the car mirror my niece crying as we left her behind," Saja says. But now she realizes that it was a good thing she didn't come. "It might have been the last time her parents would have seen her if she had come with us."
Saja was singing a song in the Kurmanji (Badini) dialect with her husband on the way, clapping, dancing and cheering inside the car. She was waiting for the best night of her life.
Then they played a song by the popular singer Romi Harki as they drove the car on a road full of potholes and bumps towards Al-Hamdaniya. During that, Saja's husband said, "I don't think the groom's sister has dressed up and prepared herself like you. Save your energy for the party."
Judgment Day in Al-Haitham Hall
Saja and her husband arrived at Al-Haitham Hall in Al-Hamdaniya at around 10:20. The hall was crowded with cars, so they had to park their car 200 meters away and walk to the hall.
At first, they wanted to enter through the main door, but a number of children who were playing on the right side of the hall told Saja’s husband, “Uncle, this door is closed, enter through the kitchen door.”
The children told us that dinner would be served at 11. Saja turned to her husband and said, “We arrived at the right time.”
The kitchen backdoor is located behind the hall, but it is not large enough and can only accommodate one person.
Saja will never forget the moment she headed towards the hall, when the sound of a quiet song mixed with the clatter of her shoes, while a fresh air was coming out of the hall.
With the entrance of the guests, the lights and lamps of the hall went out completely except for a luminous circle in which Revyan and Hanin danced and a photographer who was documenting those moments.
"A calm and romantic atmosphere prevailed in the hall. My husband asked me to go and sit, but I said that I wanted to watch that beautiful dance. Also, the hall was still dark and we would not find a place to sit," said Saja.
She added, "The fireworks were launched and mixed with the sound of the music. It was a wonderful and exciting scene, the climax of beauty and romance. It only took 20 seconds."
The moments of the Hamdaniya wedding hall fire. Video was published by the Iraqi Ministry of Interior
The fireworks were launched from the floor of the hall towards the ceiling. Suddenly, the ceiling of the hall turned into a mass of fire and began to fall on the heads of those present.
According to estimates by the Civil Defense in Nineveh, At least 700 people were in the hall, which was designed to hold only 500.
“As the ceiling of parts of the hall collapsed, the attendees were asked via loudspeaker to leave the hall immediately,” Saja said.
She will never forget the moment the fire broke out, as the sounds of children screaming and women wailing mixed with the evacuation call.
"The large number of tables and chairs, the narrow exit gates, the shoes and many women wearing high heels, made the attendees stumble and fall on top of each other. It was not an easy task to escape the hall while flames were falling on the heads of people and smoke was filling the hall that was dark after the power outage.”
Since they arrived late and were three meters from the door, Saja and her husband were among the first survivors.
As the ceiling of parts of the hall collapsed, the attendees were asked via loudspeaker to leave the hall immediately
"Once I left the hall, I turned around and said that this was the Day of Judgment. Women and men were falling on top of each other and the flames were falling on their heads. The screaming, wailing and smoke mixed together. The scene was so terrifying that I was unable to stand on my feet. I also started screaming."
At that moment, Revyan was hugging his bride and they fell before they exited the main door.
"I saw with my own eyes as they fell under the feet of the attendees. The groom got up, threw his jacket and screamed for help. He went back to the bride and had to tear the bride's clothes to save her from underfoot and they survived in this way," she added.
The people who survived the hall fire broke down the main back gate to open another way out after they were stranded inside the hall.
At this moment, Saja's husband asked his wife to get into the car. He gave her the car keys and said that he would go help the victims.
Saja says that she was sitting and was in a state of panic and crying, but she could not bear to stay and got out of the car and heard the sound of a child crying.
"I approached him, he was less than two years old, a dark-skinned, curly-haired child wearing a white T-shirt and blue cowboy pants. Maybe they had rescued him and left him there."
Saja hugged the child and took him with her to the car. His clothes were dusty and partly wet, so she took off his clothes and saw burn marks on his stomach and one of his feet.
"I was very sad for him. I found a bottle of water in the car, I poured the water on the burns, he looked at me and smiled, it seemed that the water helped ease his pain. It was hot so I turned on the car's air conditioner, gave him chocolate, he ate it and then started crying non-stop again."
Saja drew a painting of the child she found in front of Al-Haitham Hall in Al-Hamdaniya, who later died of his wounds.
Saja says that after a quarter of an hour, people's screams "reached the heavens." The police, civil defense, and ambulances arrived at the scene of the accident and began transporting the injured to the hospitals in Al-Hamdaniya and Mosul and handed them the child.
Meanwhile, her husband called her and asked her to bring the car near the gate to transport some of the injured to the hospital, but the place was very crowded, so her husband had to bring two 13-year-old girls and a man to the car and take them to the hospital.
When they arrived in front of Al-Hamdaniya Hospital, the scenes of crowding and screaming were repeated. The place was full of ambulances and police, and young women helped Saja and her husband transport the injured.
As Saja was about to leave the hospital, she saw two bodies. It pained her greatly when she learned that one of them belonged to the child she had tried to help.
“I kissed him warmly. The traces of chocolate were still on his cheek. I touched his curly hair. His last smile was still drawn on his face. I cried a lot for him.”
Saja asked the doctors about the cause of his death, and they told her that “the burns extended to his kidneys.”
A day after the incident, the Civil Defense Directorate in Nineveh launched investigations into the circumstances of the Hamdaniya fire, stressing that “the wedding hall was covered with Ecobond, which is a highly flammable material and its use is in violation of safety procedures. The hall did not adhere to safety standards.”
The investigations showed that “the outbreak of the fire led to the collapse of part of the hall due to the use of low-cost, flammable building materials. As a result, the ceiling collapsed minutes after the fire broke out.”
The ceiling was also decorated with flammable party materials.
The total death toll from the fire reached 125 people by February 2024, and twice that number was injured. Deaths were recorded among those injured in the fire in September, most of them from the Christian component.
The Iraqi Ministry of Interior formed a committee to investigate the incident, published its results in October 2023, and stressed that the incident "was not intentional," but there was negligence on the part of the hall owner and those responsible for launching the fireworks.
"Turning off the electricity at that moment caused great panic among those present in the hall."
The hall, according to the Ministry of Interior, "did not have multiple exits, did not contain safety requirements, and the number of people present exceeded its capacity."
The owner of the hall took all the surveillance camera CCTV recordings with him and, according to the Ministry of Interior, "fled to Erbil."
The Iraqi Ministry of Interior issued arrest warrants for 14 people, including the owner of the hall, 10 workers and three others responsible for setting off the fireworks.
But the results of the investigation committee sparked widespread anger among the Christians of Hamdaniya, who demanded an international investigation, suspecting that the incident was "deliberate".
Dozens of those injured in the incident were transferred outside Iraq at the government's expense to receive treatment.
Ten people from the family and relatives of the bride (Haneen) were killed in the incident, including her mother, sister and her niece.
Despite the passage of a year since the Hamdaniya fire, the incident left a great shock among the people of the district and Nineveh Province in general. The injured in particular and part of the attendants in general are still in a miserable psychological state, including people like Saja who witnessed the tragedy.
