‘State of shock’: Kuwait fire leaves many families bereft in India’s Kerala

Most of the victims in the deadly blaze that engulfed a block housing immigrant workers are from India.

From a father-of-two who planned to leave his job to a 29-year-old due to visit his family in August, two dozen Indians from the southern state of Kerala died in a fire that ripped through a labour-housing facility in Kuwait, leaving their families bereft.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs on Thursday said 40 Indians died in the blaze at a building housing workers in Kuwait’s Mangaf city, which also killed at least nine others, including three Philippine nationals.

Kuwait’s Foreign Minister Abdullah al-Yahya told reporters on Thursday that one person succumbed to injuries, taking the number of deaths to at least 50.

More than 50 other workers were injured, some critically, but their nationalities could not immediately be confirmed by the Kuwaiti government.

Most of oil-rich Kuwait’s four million-plus population is made up of foreigners, many of them from South and Southeast Asia working in construction and service industries. They often live in overcrowded accommodations.

For decades, a disproportionately large share of Indian workers in the Gulf have been drawn from Kerala, a densely populated state along southern India’s Arabian Sea coast.

In Kerala, Norka Roots, a government agency for the state residents living outside, placed the number of dead from the state at 24. The federal government arranged a special flight to bring the bodies, Norka secretary K Vasuki said.

In a post on X late on Wednesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the country was “doing everything possible to assist those affected by this gruesome fire tragedy”. Next of kin will receive payments of 200,000 rupees ($2,400), his office