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2009 Kuwait wedding fire

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Location
  
Jahra, Kuwait

Start date
  
August 15, 2009

Attack type
  
Arson

Non-fatal injuries
  
90

Total number of deaths
  
57

Perpetrator
  
Nasra Yussef Mohammad al-Enezi,

The 2009 Kuwait wedding fire was an arson attack that occurred during a wedding ceremony in Jahra, Kuwait on August 15, 2009. At least 57 people were killed and about 90 others wounded when the groom's 23-year-old ex-wife, Nasra Yussef Mohammad al-Enezi, to take revenge for her husband's second marriage, poured petrol on a tent where women and children were celebrating and set it on fire. Within three minutes the whole tent, which had only one exit and did not meet fire safety regulations, was engulfed in flames, trapping many inside. It was the deadliest civilian disaster in Kuwait in the last 40 years.

There was only one exit. It had been claimed that the temperature inside the tent was above 500 degrees Celsius (930 °F). Although al-Enezi recanted a confession she had given to police after her arrest, stating in court she had only sprayed the tent with cursed water, but did not set it on fire, she was found guilty of premeditated murder and starting a fire with the intent to kill and sentenced to death on March 30, 2010. She was hanged by the Kuwaiti Central Prison authorities on January 25, 2017.

References

2009 Kuwait wedding fire Wikipedia