On a Wednesday dawn, a catastrophic blaze swept through the maternity ward of Pakistan’s leading public hospital, claiming the lives of 14 infants and leaving grieving families and a nation in shock. The fire broke out on the third floor of the Mother and Child Health Ward at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS), located in the capital city of Islamabad, according to an official statement from the Islamabad district administration.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif confirmed that all 14 fatalities were infants. Deputy Interior Minister Talal Chaudhry added that 19 people, including seven children, were pulled from the burning building by rescue teams. Authorities have traced the origin of the fire to a faulty air conditioning unit. Health Minister Mustafa Kamal told reporters that closed-circuit camera footage captured a spark from the unit igniting surrounding materials, with the blaze spreading across the entire ward in less than 60 seconds.
A critical safety gap has already been exposed in the aftermath: despite firefighters deploying 26 fire extinguishers to combat the flames, the ward had no functional water sprinkler system installed, a shortcoming that hampered early containment efforts.
Witness accounts paint a harrowing picture of chaos, panic and systemic failure during and after the blaze. Multiple witnesses, including grieving parents, described thick choking black smoke that filled hallways within minutes, shattered glass from forced exits, and dangerously slow response times from emergency services. Khurram Mehmood, a 40-year-old father, told AFP he lost his three-day-old daughter in the fire, saying rescuers took multiple hours to reach the affected ward. “My wife was in the ward. They took everyone out. We were sitting on the road waiting for help,” Mehmood said.
Jaweria, another mother who lost her newborn child, told reporters the door to the neonatal intensive care unit where her baby was being treated was locked during the blaze. “I do not believe this. Give me my child back… Why did the doctors leave the children there?” she questioned through tears.
Witness Abdul Ghafoor, who entered the hospital to help evacuate patients, said he was unable to reach the maternity ward due to the rapid spread of flames. “There were babies as young as one day old. There was thick black smoke inside and patients were trapped… Rescue teams arrived after almost two hours (after the fire started),” Ghafoor said. One anonymous witness added that hospital security personnel blocked exits and prevented people from evacuating, forcing many to break down doors to escape, while rescue teams had to smash windows to access the burning ward.
Official accounts contradict these witness claims of delayed response. Islamabad Chief Commissioner Sohail Ashraf said the first emergency call was received just before 7:00 a.m. local time (0200 GMT), and responders reached the scene “immediately” to bring the fire under control. Chaudhry also denied that response was slowed by the public holiday, saying rescue teams arrived at the hospital within six minutes of the call. “What happened is sad, but there was no negligence when it came to the rescue operations,” Chaudhry said, adding that an official inquiry would examine gaps in hospital facilities.
Outside the hospital, AFP reporters documented scenes of overwhelming grief and frantic anxiety as grieving families waited for news of their loved ones. One nurse was seen calling out the names of infants who had died in the blaze, while evacuated patients streamed out of the building with soot covering their faces. Shagufta Parveen, a mother who escaped with her 10-day-old baby, said: “People were screaming. There was black smoke. We ran for our lives. Thank God my baby is safe.”
Following Islamic tradition that requires burials within 24 hours of death, the first funerals for the deceased infants began Wednesday afternoon. AFP journalists witnessed a tiny shrouded body carried through the streets of nearby Rawalpindi, followed by a quiet procession of mourning family members ahead of the funeral prayer.
In response to the tragedy, Prime Minister Sharif has ordered a full independent investigation and promised the “strictest possible action” against any person found responsible for safety failures. A statement from his office confirmed that he has already sacked federal Health Secretary Aslam Ghori, the nation’s top civil servant for the health department. Chaudhry confirmed that all 14 bodies have been released to their families for burial.
The United Nations children’s agency UNICEF issued a statement saying it was “deeply saddened” by the preventable deaths, and called for an “urgent review and strengthening of fire prevention and safety standards across health facilities” nationwide.
This tragedy is not an isolated incident in Pakistan: deadly fires in large public and commercial buildings are a recurring crisis, widely attributed to lax safety regulations, outdated building codes and poor enforcement of existing rules. In January of this year, a fire at a Karachi shopping center killed more than 65 people. Another 2023 shopping mall fire in Karachi killed 11 people, and a 2012 garment factory blaze in the same city killed more than 250 workers.