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KUWAIT CITY — Kuwaiti authorities said on Thursday three people had been detained for suspected manslaughter over a building fire that killed 50 foreign workers, mostly Indians, and plunged relatives and friends into mourning.

Three Filipinos were also among the dead, officials in Manila said, after the fire sent black smoke billowing through the six-storey structure south of Kuwait City and injured dozens more.

Most of oil-rich Kuwait's population of more than 4 million is made up of foreigners, many of them from South and Southeast Asia working in construction and service industries.

The fire broke out around dawn on Wednesday at the base of the block housing nearly 200 workers in the Mangaf area, which is heavily populated with migrant labourers.

"One of the injured died" overnight, Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Abdullah Al Yahya told reporters, after 49 people were declared dead on Wednesday.

"The majority of the dead are Indians," he added. "There are other nationalities but I don't remember exactly."

Many of the dead and injured suffocated from smoke inhalation after being trapped in the building by the fire, according to a source in the fire department.

One Kuwaiti and two foreign residents have been detained on suspicion of manslaughter through negligence of security procedures and fire regulations, the public prosecution service said.

The blaze was started by an electrical fault in the guard’s room on the ground floor, the General Fire Force said after an inspection.

On Wednesday, Interior Minister Sheikh Fahd Al Yousef vowed to address “labour overcrowding and neglect”, and threatened to close any buildings that flout safety rules.

Friends and relatives of the victims, who are among millions of Asians who live and work in the wealthy Gulf to remit money to their families, were in shock at the tragedy.

Shameer Umarudheen’s “entire village is in mourning”, said Safedu, a relative of the 33-year-old victim from Kollam, in the southern Indian state of Kerala.

“He was a lovely man. Always very friendly to everyone around,” Safedu added.

“He does not come from a well-off family, so him going to Kuwait was a chance for the family to do better.”

DNA testing

Reji Varghese said his close friend Lukose VO, 49, was staying on the sixth floor of the block. His death was reported by another worker who leapt from the second floor, breaking his leg, to escape.

“I’m still not able to come to terms with it. We didn’t believe the news when we heard about it,” said Varghese.

“I spoke to him just last week... This news is a shock.”

On Wednesday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised help for those affected by the “gruesome fire tragedy”, announcing 200,000-rupee ($2,400) payments to next of kin.

India’s junior foreign minister Kirti Vardhan Singh has flown in to help survivors and organise the repatriation of remains on an Indian air force plane.

“Some of the bodies have been charred beyond recognition, so DNA tests [are] under way to identify the victims,” he told Indian media.

In Manila, the Department of Migrant Workers said three Filipinos had died from smoke inhalation, with two more in critical condition while six escaped unharmed.

“We are in touch with the families of all the affected [migrants], including the families of those two in critical condition and the families of the three fatalities,” Migrant Workers Secretary Hans Leo J. Cacdac said in a statement.

The blaze was one of the worst seen in Kuwait, which borders Iraq and Saudi Arabia and sits on about seven percent of the world’s known oil reserves.

In 2009, 57 people died when a Kuwaiti woman, apparently seeking revenge, set fire to a tent at a wedding party when her husband married a second wife.

DOHA — Top US diplomat Antony Blinken said on Wednesday an elusive truce and hostage release deal to end the Gaza war was still possible, wrapping up a Middle East tour as deadly fighting rocked the Palestinian territory.

Lebanon's Iran-backed militant group Hizbollah, a Hamas ally, rained rockets on northern Israel, a day after an Israeli strike killed one of its senior commanders.

Secretary of State Blinken, in Doha for the last stop of a tour to promote President Joe Biden's Gaza ceasefire roadmap, said the United States would work with regional partners to "close the deal".

Hamas late Tuesday submitted its response to mediators Qatar and Egypt, and Blinken said some of the proposed amendments "are workable and some are not".

A senior Hamas official, Osama Hamdan, said it sought "a permanent ceasefire and complete withdrawal" of Israeli troops from Gaza, demands rejected by Israel.

The three-stage plan — endorsed by the UN Security Council and Arab powers — includes a six-week ceasefire, a hostage-prisoner exchange and Gaza's internationally backed reconstruction.

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said "many" of Hamas's demands were "minor and not unanticipated", while "others differ more substantively from what was outlined in the UN Security Council resolution".

Blinken said Israel was behind the plan, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose government has far-right members strongly opposed to the deal, has yet to formally endorse it.

Netanyahu's office said he was convening a "security assessment" on Wednesday "in light of the developments in the north and Hamas's negative response on the issue of the hostage release".

The top US diplomat expressed hopes that gaps could be closed.

“We have to see... over the course of the coming days whether those gaps are bridgeable,” said Blinken.

Hizbollah rockets

As the bloody Gaza war rages into its ninth month, deadly violence has intensified along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon.

An Israeli strike on Tuesday killed a Hezbollah commander described by a Lebanese military source as the Shiite Muslim group’s “most important” fighter killed in near-daily exchanges of fire between Israel and Hizbollah since the Gaza war erupted.

On Wednesday three waves of about 150 rockets and missiles filled the sky over northern Israel, according to the military, reporting fires but no casualties.

Hizbollah also claimed more than 10 other attacks on the Israeli military, including one with drones.

Senior Hizbollah official Hashem Safieddine threatened to “increase the intensity, strength, quantity and quality of our attacks”.

Netanyahu warned last week that the army was “prepared for a very intense operation” to “restore security to the north”.

In Doha, Blinken said “the best way” to help end the Hizbollah-Israel violence was “a resolution of the conflict in Gaza and getting a ceasefire”.

“That will take a tremendous amount of pressure out of the system.”

The Gaza war broke out after Hamas’ October 7 attack which resulted in the deaths of 1,194 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

The militants also seized 251 hostages. Of these 116 remain in Gaza, although the army says 41 of them are dead.

Israel in response launched a military offensive on Gaza that has left at least 37,202 people dead, also mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-ruled territory’s health ministry.

‘Tired, dead, destroyed’

In central Gaza’s Bureij refugee camp, resident Ahmed Al Rubi said he hoped a deal would end the “severe suffering we are going through”.

“I hope for a ceasefire,” he told AFP. “What has happened to us is enough.”

Israeli campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said Hamas’ response “represents another step towards accepting Israel’s hostage deal proposal”, referring to the Biden plan.

It urged Israel to send negotiators as soon as possible, warning “any delay may jeopardise the possibility of reaching a deal”.

Some Gazans have called on Hamas to do more to secure a deal.

“Hamas does not see that we are tired, we are dead, we are destroyed,” a Gaza man told AFP, giving his name as Abu Shaker.

“What are you waiting for?” he said. “The war must end at any cost. We cannot bear it any longer.”

Israel’s military kept up its bombardment and ground operations inside Gaza, where a witness said there was “aerial and artillery shelling” in the southern city of Rafah.

A child was killed in an Israeli bombardment targeting a Rafah house, a medic at Al Nasser Hospital said. Air strikes and shelling also hit nearby Khan Yunis.

Farther north, the civil defence agency reported at least four dead in a strike on a house in the Zeitun neighbourhood of Gaza City, where a hospital earlier said a pre-dawn raid killed seven people.

‘Starvation’

A UN investigation concluded on Wednesday that Israel has committed crimes against humanity during the Gaza war, including that of “extermination”.

It found both Israeli forces and Palestinian militants and civilians had committed war crimes.

The Commission of Inquiry, established by the UN Human Rights Council, noted “a widespread or systematic attack directed against the civilian population in Gaza” including “starvation as a method of warfare”.

Israel rejected the conclusions and accused the commission of “discrimination”.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the conflict has seen “a unique level of destruction and a unique level of casualties in the Palestinian population during these months of war”.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said more than 8,000 children aged under five have been treated for acute malnutrition in Gaza, where only two stabilisation centres for severely malnourished patients currently operate.

“Despite reports of increased delivery of food, there is currently no evidence that those who need it most are receiving sufficient quantity and quality of food,” said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

BEIRUT — Lebanese militant group Hizbollah fired barrages of rockets at Israel on Wednesday and vowed to intensify its attacks after an Israeli strike killed a senior commander in south Lebanon the previous day.

Hizbollah has traded near-daily cross-border fire with Israeli forces since its Palestinian ally Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7, triggering war in the Gaza Strip.

The exchanges have escalated in recent weeks, with Hizbollah stepping up its use of drones to attack Israeli military positions and Israel hitting back with targeted strikes against the fighters.

"We will increase the intensity, strength, quantity and quality of our attacks," said senior Hizbollah official Hashem Safieddine, speaking at the funeral of commander Taleb Sami Abdallah, who was killed in Tuesday's Israeli strike.

In Doha, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken renewed calls Wednesday for a diplomatic solution on the Israel-Lebanon border and said a long-sought Gaza ceasefire deal would "take a tremendous amount of pressure out of the system".

Hizbollah said that in "response to the assassination carried out by the Zionist enemy", it launched six attacks with Katyusha rockets or heavy-duty Burkan missiles at military positions and bases in northern Israel, also striking a "military factory" with guided missiles.

The Iran-backed fighter group in separate statements also claimed more than 10 other attacks on Israeli troops and positions on Wednesday, including one with drones.

The Israeli forces said more than 150 “projectiles” had been fired from Lebanon in three successive barrages.

“Approximately 90 projectiles were identified crossing from Lebanon,” it said, adding several were intercepted but others struck inside Israel, sparking fires in parts of the north.

The initial barrage was followed by a second of about 70 projectiles and a third of around 10, the military said, adding the army struck several sites in south Lebanon in response.

‘Important’ commander

“Israel Fire and Rescue Services are currently operating to extinguish the fires that broke out as a result of the launches,” the military said.

Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency medical service said there were no immediate reports of casualties.

The Israeli forces on Wednesday confirmed it had “eliminated” Taleb Sami Abdallah in a strike the day before on a Hizbollah command centre in southern Lebanon.

In a statement, it called Abdallah “one of Hizbollah’s most senior commanders in southern Lebanon” and said he “planned, advanced, and carried out a large number of terror attacks against Israeli civilians”.

Abdallah was killed along with three Hezbollah comrades in an Israeli strike on Jouaiyya, 15 kilometres from the border, a source close to the group told AFP.

A Lebanese military source said the commander was “the most important in Hizbollah to be killed... since the start of the war”.

The group had urged its supporters to attend Abdallah’s funeral in the southern suburbs of Beirut, describing him as “one of the knights of the resistance”.

Men wearing military fatigues and black berets carried his coffin, covered in Hizbollah’s yellow flag, as a brass band played for the ceremony.

‘Harsh blow’

Pro-Hizbollah newspaper Al Akhbar described the strike that killed Abdallah as “a harsh blow” to the group.

Britain-based Middle East specialist Amal Saad played down the prospect of wider escalation.

“I don’t think that the death of this highest-ranking commander is going to change any of Hizbollah’s calculations,” she said, adding civilian casualties were “red lines” for the group rather than the targeting of commanders or fighters.

“We witnessed an escalation in quality and quantity of [Hizbollah] attacks in order to put pressure on Israel and the US in the ceasefire talks and improve Hamas’s bargaining position,” Saad said.

On Tuesday, Hizbollah said it fired about 50 rockets at Israeli positions in the annexed Golan Heights.

More than eight months of cross-border violence has killed at least 468 people in Lebanon, most of them fighters but also including 89 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

Israeli authorities say at least 15 Israeli soldiers and 11 civilians have been killed.

Tens of thousands of people have been displaced on both sides of the border since the violence erupted the day after the Hamas attack on southern Israel.

The October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,194 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive against Hamas has killed at least 37,202 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

KUWAIT CITY — A fire in Kuwait killed 49 people, all Indian nationals, when it ripped through a building housing nearly 200 foreign workers on Wednesday, the government said.

The blaze, which broke out in the six-storey building south of Kuwait City at around dawn, also left dozens injured, the health ministry said.

Flames engulfed the lower floors as black smoke poured out of the upper-storey windows, unverified images posted on social media showed.

The interior ministry revised the death toll up to 49, from 35 issued earlier, after forensic teams scoured the charred building.

"The number of deaths as a result of the fire in the workers' building... has risen to 49," the ministry said.

The official Kuwait News Agency quoted Health Minister Ahmed Al Awadhi as saying hospitals had received 56 people injured in the fire in the Mangaf area, which is heavily populated with migrant labourers.

The building, whose exterior was blackened with soot, housed 196 workers, according to information given to the interior minister by their employer.

Oil-rich Kuwait has large numbers of foreign workers, many of them from South and Southeast Asia, and mostly working in construction or service industries.

A source in the fire department said the victims suffocated from rising smoke after the fire started at the building’s base.

A foreign ministry statement said later the “tragic” fire had “claimed the lives of 49 citizens of the Indian community residing in the state of Kuwait”.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi called the disaster “saddening” in a post on social media platform X.

“My thoughts are with all those who have lost their near and dear ones,” wrote Modi, as the Indian embassy in Kuwait set up an emergency helpline for updates.

‘Overcrowding and neglect’

India’s Minister of State for External Affairs Kirti Vardhan Singh was also on his way to coordinate assistance and repatriate the dead, India’s foreign ministry spokesman said.

India’s Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar posted that he was “deeply shocked by the news” and offered “deepest condolences to the families of those who tragically lost their lives”.

He spokes on the phone with his Kuwaiti counterpart Abdullah Al Yahya who “expressed the condolences of the leadership, government and people of the state of Kuwait”, the foreign ministry statement said.

Yahya also “called for a speedy recovery for those injured as a result of this painful disaster” and said Kuwaiti authorities were “harnessing all their capabilities” to assist them, it added.

Interior Minister Sheikh Fahd Al Yousef said the building’s owner had been detained for potential negligence, adding any properties violating safety regulations would be closed immediately.

“We will work to address the issue of labour overcrowding and neglect,” he said. “We will detain the owner of the property where the fire broke out until legal procedures are completed.”

The blaze is one of the worst seen in Kuwait, which borders Iraq and Saudi Arabia and sits on about 7percent of the world’s oil reserves.