India takes 45 Workers' Bodies from Kuwait

Forty-five workers were killed in a fire in Kuwait. An Indian Air Force trip took back their bodies. 176 Indian workers were living in the building when the fire broke out on Wednesday.

The government of Kuwait said that the fire killed 50 people, 45 of whom were from India and three from the Philippines. Two bodies have not been named yet.

The fire has also hurt dozens of workers, most of whom are Indian.

Two-thirds of the people living in Kuwait are foreign workers, and the country depends on them a lot, especially in the building and housekeeping industries.

Human rights groups have made concerns about their living situations many times.

Kirti Vardhan Singh, an Indian politician who had gone to Kuwait after the attack, said that DNA tests had been done to find out who the victims were.

Workers from 23 states in India have been declared dead. Seven of them are from Tamil Nadu, three are from Andhra Pradesh, two are from Odisha, and one is from each of Bihar, Punjab, Karnataka, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Jharkhand, and Haryana.

To bring the bodies back, Mr. Singh said, the Indian government had set up a memorable Air Force trip.

The plane touched down in Kochi, Kerala, on Friday morning. The bodies of workers from southern Indian states were given to the officials, and the flight continued to Delhi.

Other politicians from Kerala, including Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, were at the airport to receive the bodies and pay their respects.

"This is a terrible thing for our country." The foreign workers who come to Kerala are essential to our state. "The fire in Kuwait is one of the worst things that have happened in our community," Mr. Vijayan said.

Both the state and federal governments have said they will pay the families of those who died in the fire.

The government of Kuwait says that health and safety standards are being checked in several buildings that house foreign workers in the country.

One report from the Arab Times says that the fire began because of an electrical short circuit in the room where the security guard worked on the first floor of the six-story building.

A top official from Kuwait's fire department said on Wednesday that explosive materials were used to separate the rooms and flats in the building.

The Times was told that Kuwait's Public Prosecution department arrested a citizen and some expats on charges of killing and carelessness for not taking fire safety precautions.

After the fire, the country's deputy prime minister, Sheikh Fahad Yusuf al-Sabah, said that property owners were greedy and that broken building codes caused the tragedy.