A fire at a wedding hall in Iraq has killed over 100, injured 150

A raging fire seemingly caused by fireworks set off to celebrate a Christian wedding consumed a hall packed with guests in northern Iraq, killing at least 100 people and injuring 150 others as authorities warned Wednesday the death toll could still rise.

Authorities said that flammable building materials also contributed to the latest disaster to hit Iraq's dwindling Christian minority.

The fire happened in the Hamdaniya area of Iraq's Nineveh province, authorities said.

That's a predominantly Christian area just outside of the city of Mosul, some 335 kilometres (205 miles) northwest of Baghdad.

There was no official word on the cause of the blaze, but the Kurdish television news channel Rudaw aired footage showing fireworks shooting up from the floor of the event and setting a chandelier aflame.

In the blaze's aftermath, only charred metal and debris could be seen as people walked through the scene of the fire, the only light coming from television cameras and the lights of onlookers' mobile phones.

Survivors arrived at local hospitals in bandages, receiving oxygen, as their families milled through hallways and outside as workers organised more oxygen cylinders.

Some of those burned included children. Ambulance sirens wailed for hours after the fire as paramedics brought out the injured.

Other footage shown on other local television networks appeared to show the bride and groom on the dance floor when the fire began Tuesday night, stunned by the sight of the burning debris.

It wasn't immediately clear if they were among those hurt.

There were about to do a slow dance and then they lit up this thing for the dance which caught fire," one injured woman told Rudaw from a hospital gurney.

Another man injured in the fire at the hospital similarly told Rudaw that the blaze started as the couple prepared for their slow dance.

Health officials in Nineveh province raised the death toll to 114, though federal officials did not immediately update their figure of at least 100 killed.

Health Ministry spokesman Saif al-Badr put the number of injured at 150 in that earlier statement carried by the state-run Iraqi News Agency.

All efforts are being made to provide relief to those affected by the unfortunate accident, al-Badr said.

Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani ordered an investigation into the fire and asked the country's Interior and Health officials to provide relief, his office said in a statement online.

Najim al-Jubouri, the provincial governor of Nineveh, said some of the injured had been transferred to regional hospitals.

He cautioned there were no final casualty figures yet from the blaze, which suggests the death toll still may rise.

Hamdaniya is on Iraq's Nineveh Plains and under the control of its central government, though it is close to and claimed by Iraq's semiautonomous Kurdish regional government.

Masrour Barzani, the prime minister of the Kurdish region, ordered hospitals there to also help those hurt in the blaze.

Father Rudi Saffar Khoury, a priest at the wedding, said it was unclear who was to blame for the fire.

It could be a mistake by the event organizers or venue hosts, or maybe a technical error, Khoury told The Associated Press. It was a disaster in every sense of the word.

The fire led to the collapse of parts of the hall as a result of the use of highly flammable, low-cost building materials that collapse within minutes when the fire breaks out, civil defense said.