Fire breaks out at large mall under construction in Qatar

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – A fire broke out Saturday at an $825-million mall under construction near a stadium where Qatar plans to host some of the 2022 FIFA World Cup, authorities said. There were no reported injuries, though the mall said some 14,000 labourers and staff had been evacuated.

Qatar’s Interior Ministry said on Twitter that firefighters battled a blaze at a mall under construction near the Al-Rayan Sports Club on the western outskirts of Doha, the country’s capital. That’s where developers are building the Mall of Qatar, a massive shopping centre under construction since 2012 that was scheduled to open later this year.

Video on social media showed a thick black cloud of smoke rising over the mall.

UrbaCon Trading & Contracting Co., the construction company building the mall, did not immediately answer a request for comment by email and a telephone message Saturday.

In a statement posted to Facebook, management at the Mall of Qatar said the fire began around 2:30 p.m.

“An investigation is being conducted and details will be provided once the investigation is complete,” the statement read. Mall management did not respond to a request for comment.

Just before 8 p.m., the Interior Ministry announced civil defence forces had extinguished the blaze, which caused no injuries. Government officials in Qatar, a small, peninsular country rich in natural gas and oil and home to a major U.S. military installation, did not respond to a request for comment.

Mall of Qatar is planned to be some 5.4 million square feet (500,000 square meters), and to be connected to the Doha Metro. Plans call for Qatar to renovate the nearby Ahmed bin Ali Stadium to host World Cup matches.

A previous fire at a shopping mall was the deadliest disaster to strike Qatar in recent memory. The 2012 blaze at the high-end Villaggio shopping mall in Doha killed 19 people, many of them foreigners. The victims included 13 children. Most of those killed were at a daycare centre inside the shopping mall, which opened in 2006 and houses an ice skating rink and Venice-style gondolas.

Investigators blamed faulty wiring for sparking the blaze, but cited a number of factors that contributed to its spread and the deaths. Five people were sentenced to prison in 2013 in connection with the fire, but an appeals court judge overturned those convictions last October.

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Associated Press writer Adam Schreck contributed to this report.

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