REPORT, — On 5 December 37 Kurdish female children attended their sub-standard class room in Shinawe village in Xane (Piranshar) city, but they never knew how would they go back home.
The school they attended were bellow standards and designed to be evacuated and demolished as construction of new building was in agenda that were never to be realised.
The class room they attended used to be heated by an out-of-date oil heater that burst into flame on Wednesday 5 December at around 8:30 am when its oil-pipe leaked.
The fire blast injured 36 students all of who were taken to hospital in Xane to receive basic medical treatments. Most the injured were consequently taken to Tabriz and Urmiye hospitals as Xane’s, like many other Kurdish cities’, lacked the required facilities to deal with the fatal.
Some of the injured primary school girls were reported to be at critical condition, two of them have already died of the wounds.
Although the officials have claimed the causes of the blast is not known, but the use of out-of-date oil heaters and lack of sufficient service in Kurdistanian schools are the underlying causes of the blast.
Asked about having fire extinguishers in the schools and their uses in such cases, Murtaza Raisi the Head of Renovation of Iranian School said, “There had been two fire extinguishers in the school, but the level of the fire was beyond that could be put out be such extinguishers.”
Asked about why Shinawe village had no gas facilities; Mr. Raisi observed; “Having considered a small amounts of students in the school, the central heating service, was of no use.”
Resul Xezri the deputy to Xane and Serdesht cities in the Iranian Parliament lashed out the Minister for Education urging his to step down.
“I am not sure it sympathy would be enough or not,” said Mr Xezri stressing that; “Had such an episode happen in anywhere in the world, the Minister for Education would have resigned”.
Mr. Xezri also criticised the state officials for their ignorance saying that; “unfortunately such episodes have always happened in the peripheries and the state officials have not reacted accountably.”
Xezri believed that the episode would in no way be justified while holding the Head of School Renovation as accountable because the budgets dedicated for the peripheries are spent in the centre.