At least 40 Indians die in a fire at a building housing foreign workers in Kuwait (2024)

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How many Indians were killed in the Kuwait fire? ›

In Short. The death toll in the massive fire that engulfed a six-storey building in Kuwait early on Wednesday reached 49, while more than 50 others were injured. Kuwaiti authorities have identified the bodies of 45 Indians and three Filipino nationals killed.

At least 40 Indians are among 50 people killed in a fire at a residential building in the Kuwaiti city of Mangaf, India's foreign ministry has said. The fire broke out on Wednesday in a building where dozens of workers stayed.

A fire in a Kuwaiti building housing 195 migrant workers, mostly Indians, led to 45 Indian fatalities. The blaze, caused by an electrical short circuit, was attributed to safety violations. PM Modi expressed sorrow and announced relief.

More than 170,000 Indians were stranded on Kuwaiti soil.

European settlers killed 56 million indigenous people over about 100 years in South, Central and North America, causing large swaths of farmland to be abandoned and reforested, researchers at University College London, or UCL, estimate.

An international coalition of firefighters battled the fires for months until the last well was finally capped on 6 November 1991 and Kuwait celebrated under clear skies. But today more than 90% of the unprotected contaminated soil remains exposed in the environment.

As early as December 1990, Iraqi forces placed explosive charges on Kuwaiti oil wells. The wells were systematically sabotaged beginning on January 16, 1991, when the allies commenced air strikes against Iraqi targets.

With 12.4 deaths per million population, the United States rate of fire deaths was much smaller than that of Finland, the nation with the highest death rate, record- ing 18.0 deaths per million population.

In 1991, Landsat captured the devastating environmental consequences of war. As Iraqi forces withdrew from Kuwait, they set fire to more 650 oil wells and damaged roughly 75 more, which then spewed crude oil across the desert and into the Persian Gulf. Fires burned for ten months.

The death toll of Indians killed in the massive fire in Kuwait has risen to 46 with one more person succumbing to injuries as authorities said that an electrical short circuit in the room of the guard on the ground floor of the building caused the blaze that killed 50 people.

How was the Kuwaiti oil fires cleaned up? ›

Eventually, privately contracted crews extinguished the fires, at a total cost of $1.5 billion to Kuwait. About 90% of fires were put out with nothing but seawater: damaged oil pipelines were repaired and the flow was reversed to pump Persian Gulf seawater back to the burning oil wells.

Casualties, Kuwaiti oil fires, and Gulf War syndrome

Just 147 U.S. personnel and 47 British troops were killed in action; for the duration of Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, U.S. noncombat deaths actually exceeded combat fatalities in the Kuwaiti theatre. Approximately 1,000 coalition troops were wounded.

An Environmental and Economic Disaster

As the first Gulf War drew to a close in February of 1991, retreating Iraqi forces systematically blew up oil wells, tanks, refineries, and other facilities in Kuwait. According to some estimates, the resulting fires burned four to six million barrels of crude oil per day.

In 1991, the United States led a UN coalition to liberate Kuwait from Iraq.