A hospital fire has killed 11 newborn babies in a neonatal ward in the Senegalese city of Tivaouane, the west African country’s president announced just before midnight on Wednesday local time.
“I have just learned with pain and dismay the death of 11 newborns, in the fire that occurred in the neonatal department of the Mame Abdou Aziz Sy Dabakh Hospital in Tivaouane,” Senegal President Macky Sall wrote on Twitter on May 26.
“To their mothers and families, I express my deepest sympathy.”
Senegal’s health minister, Abdoulaye Diouf Sarr, told a local TV network that a preliminary investigation revealed that the fire broke out due to “a short circuit” and “spread very quickly” in the ward….