BAGHDAD -- At least 20 people were injured, including the head of Iraq’s civil defense directorate, after a commercial building in the capital Baghdad caught fire and then collapsed Sunday, a state news agency reported.
The official Iraqi News Agency said that the civil defense director, Maj. Gen. Kadhim Bohan, along with a number of firefighters, were at the scene when the burning building collapsed.
No deaths were reported. No information was immediately available on the cause of the blaze.
The civil defense announced late Sunday evening that the fire had been fully extinguished and first responders were searching for missing people at the scene.
On Oct. 29, a gas tanker exploded near a soccer field in northeastern Baghdad, killing at least nine people and wounding 10 others. The explosion was found by an investigative committee to be an accident.
