More than 60 people have died after a fire broke out in a Corona patient ward at a hospital in Iraq.
The fire at Al-Hussein Hospital in the southern city of Nasiriya was brought under control late Monday.
The cause of the fire is not immediately clear, but early reports indicate that it started after an oxygen tank exploded.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhemi ordered the arrest of a hospital chief. Relatives of the patients have been marching outside the building.
Reuters news agency reported clashes between relatives of the deceased and police as two police vehicles were set on fire.
The new ward had 70 beds and was built just three months ago, medical officials told the Associated Press. A provincial health official said at least 63 people were inside when the fire started.
"I heard a loud explosion inside the corona wards and then the fire had exploded very quickly," a hospital guard told Reuters news agency. The search operation is ongoing.
Iraqi parliamentary speaker Mohamed al-Halbousi sent a message on Twitter saying the fire was "a clear indication of the failure to protect the lives of Iraqis, and it is time to end this scourge".
In April, an oxygen tank exploded, killing at least 82 people in a hospital in the capital, Baghdad. Health Minister Hassan al-Tamimi resigned after the blaze.
The corona epidemic has severely affected health services in Iraq, plagued by years of war, neglect, and corruption.
Iraq has registered 1.4 million infections and reported more than 17,000 deaths from Corona, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
The country has provided at least one dose of the vaccine against Covid for more than one million people out of 40 million wives, the World Health Organization says.
