TEHRAN, 15 February 2005 — Thirty-five people died and 200 were injured yesterday when a faulty electrical heater started a blaze in a Tehran mosque crowded with worshippers, Iranian state television reported.
Aid workers and emergency services swarmed around the mosque, a Reuters witness said. The interior was blackened and strewn with burned shoes and clothes.
Tehran’s chief of police Morteza Talaee confirmed the death toll of 35 at the scene. Many people flocked to the Arg mosque searching for loved ones.
“I have come to look for my daughter but I am scared she is dead,” said Zeinab, clad in the all-enveloping black chador.
The students news agency ISNA reported a blast was heard then tents inside the mosque caught fire. Terrified worshippers trampled others trying to escape, some smashing windows in their desperation to flee the flames.
“I saw some women throw themselves out of a second floor window, some died like that, others from smoke inhalation,” said one of the guards at the mosque.
ISNA reported the blaze started in the section set aside for women. Television said 20 of the dead were women.
“My mother and two sisters were inside and I do not know what happened to them,” said a girl called Manizheh, sobbing.
“My two children were inside. My daughter got out, but I can’t find my son,” sobbed a woman who gave her name only as Alemeh, outside the mosque.
Mohammad Sharifmia, a doctor, said many of the burns were caused by the quick-burning acrylic material used to make chadors. He saw many people with lacerations from broken glass. Others had broken legs after hurling themselves from high windows.
State television put out an appeal for people to give blood.
Intelligence ministry officials were seen taking away pieces of the heater to determine the cause of the blaze. The Arg mosque is near Tehran’s sprawling bazaar and is used for political meetings of the bazaar’s conservative guilds. The fire was under brought control by 8 p.m. (1630 GMT), when the dead could be recovered and the wounded ferried to the local hospital away from the devastated courtyard.
Tehran and much of the north of Iran has been gripped by freezing blizzard conditions and days of record snowfall.
