Eleven newborn babies have died in a fire at the maternity unit of a hospital in the western city of Tivaouane in Senegal.

Initial reports suggest the fire was caused by a short circuit and then spread quickly.

Three babies were saved, said the city’s mayor, Demba Diop Sy.

Families rushed to the Mame Abdou Aziz Sy Dabakh Hospital to find out if their babies had survived. Some were overcome with grief when they heard the news.

Moustapha Cissé told Reuters news agency that his three-week-old nephew, Mohamed, was among the dead.

His mother Ramata Gueye died after childbirth. She and her husband, El Hadj Gueye, had been trying for a baby for seven years and Mohamed was their only child.

“It is heart-breaking to see him lose his wife and now his child,” said Mr Cissé. “I can’t even look him in the eyes.”

“Is it God’s plan or is it just that Senegal’s hospitals are failing? We need to put this question to the government,” he added.

The hospital had been newly inaugurated, according to AFP, citing local media reports.

President Macky Sall has declared three days of national mourning. “To their mothers and their families, I express my deepest sympathy,” he wrote in a tweet.

“I heard the news of the fire last night, but I did not tell my daughter. I waited until the morning to inform her,” said Ndeye Absa Gueye, who later found out her grandchild was among the dead.

“This hurts all of Senegal,” Tivaouane resident Ousmane Kane told Reuters.

“This situation is very unfortunate and extremely painful,” Health Minister Abdoulaye Diouf Sarr said from Geneva, where he was attending a World Health Organization meeting.

He said an investigation was under way and he would be cutting his trip short to return to Senegal immediately.

The incident has sparked a wave of indignation on social media over the state of the country’s healthcare provision.

Opposition MP Mamadou Lamine Diallo criticised the government, tweeting: “More babies burned in a public hospital… This is unacceptable”.

Rights group Amnesty International has urged the government to create an “independent commission of inquiry to determine responsibility and punish the culprits, no matter the level they are at in the state apparatus,” country director Seydi Gassama said in a tweet.

Amnesty called for all of Senegal’s neo-natal wards to be inspected after a similar incident occurred in the northern town of Linguère last year.

Four newborn babies were killed there after a fire broke out at a hospital’s maternity ward. 

At the time, the mayor said there was an electrical fault in the air conditioning unit of the maternity ward.

Wednesday’s tragedy also follows a national outcry over the death of a woman in labour, Astou Sokhna, who died while reportedly begging for a Caesarean during her 20-hour labour ordeal. Her unborn child also died.

(BBC)