Lankan maid informs police: Kuwaiti wedding tent fire suspect arrested

Manama: The first wife of the groom has been arrested on suspicion of setting on fire a wedding tent that killed dozens of women and children and injured dozens of others in Kuwait, according to a newspaper report on Monday.

The Kuwait Times and Al Qabas newspapers reported that the woman confessed to setting the tent on fire and that housemaids also said they saw the woman set the tent on fire using kerosene-soaked rags.

Al Qabas newspaper said the 23-year-old woman had told police she used petrol to torch the packed wedding tent to avenge her former husband’s “bad treatment” of her before their divorce.

A Sri Lankan woman, identified only as Salina, told the Director of Crime Scene Colonel Hammad AlـEnzi that she works as a domestic helper for a family in the area. She claimed to have seen a woman carrying a bottle full of gasoline with a lighter in the other hand. According to her, the said woman asked her to bring newspapers.

“I followed the woman and saw her throw the bottle of gasoline over the house,” the maid alleged.

Kuwait’s fire department chief on Monday raised the death toll to 43 after two of the victims who were hospitalised with severe burns died on Sunday.

The inferno ate up the women’s tent within just three minutes and left behind bodies so charred they were unrecognisable, Brigadier General Jassem Al Manouri added.

Fifty-two other injured in the blaze remained in hospital, the health minister, Hilal Al Sayer, told the state-owned Kuwait Television on Monday.

Meanwhile, Kuwaiti authorities have been able to identify 13 of the 41 victims who were killed in a blaze that gutted a large tent hosting the wedding ceremony. It was still unclear if the bride had survived

Comments

In abrupt turnaround, Olympus admits it hid losses

Japan's Olympus admitted on Tuesday it hid losses on securities investments dating back two decades, bowing to weeks of pressure to explain a series of baffling transactions that have put the future of the firm in doubt. The revelations by the 92-year-old company appear to vindicate ex-CEO Michael Woodford, who has staged a campaign since being sacked on October 14 to force the firm to come clean on nearly $1.5 billion in questionable payments. Olympus President Shuichi Takayama blamed Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, who quit as president and chairman on October 26, Vice-President Hisashi Mori and internal auditor Hideo Yamada for the cover-up, saying he would consider criminal complaints against them. The admission after weeks of denials shocked investors, sending shares in the endoscope and camera maker skidding almost 30 percent and prompting the biggest non-Japanese shareholder to demand the replacement of the entire board. "Ignorance is no defense," said Jo...

Last year's iPhones are destroying Samsung's new Galaxy S9 flagship smartphone - Bench Mark Results

Samsung announced the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+, the latest entries in its flagship line of smartphones, at Barcelona's Mobile World Congress — but benchmark results are awkwardly showing the devices scoring significantly lower than many of their competitors. Benchmarks are synthetic tests that give numeric, quantifiable results. They are generally applications programmed to make the devices' systems-on-a-chip (SoC) run a series of tasks and determine how long it takes them to complete. AnandTech is a site that specialises in running rigorous tests like these, and its early findings on Samsung's latest devices are curious to say the least— particularly compared to the latest iPhones, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 845 — which will power most of the Android flagships this year — and even Samsung's own Galaxy S8 from last year. In a number of tests — such as web browsing, writing, data manipulation, and photo editing — the Galaxy S9's Exynos 9810 consistently deliv...

ASSIGNING OF PREFERENTIAL NUMBERS FOR LG POLLS COMPLETED

The Election Secretariat announced that assigning preferential numbers for candidates of the Local Government election to be held for 67 bodies has been completed. Preparations are currently underway to hold the polls under the 2010 electoral register, Additional Elections Commissioner W.P. Sumanasiri said. The electoral register of the year 2010 is scheduled to be certified on June 31.

Share Blogs

Search This Blog