Fourteen babies died when fire tore through the newborn nursery at Islamabad’s largest public-sector hospital on Wednesday, August 26, 2026. Seventeen days later, the official inquiry has not established what started it, the final report is nearly two weeks overdue, and nobody has been charged.
The nursery at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences held 15 newborns. One was carried out alive. Federal Health Minister Mustafa Kamal confirmed that 14 babies died, and the toll has not moved since.
Two Minutes on the Cameras
Security footage reviewed by the government’s inquiry committee fixes the collapse to the second. At 6:38:15 a.m. the charge nurse ran out for help. Twenty seconds later she was back through the door with a security guard, flames already visible. At 6:38:56 a staff nurse went in and came out carrying a baby. The nursery was substantially smoke-engulfed within about two minutes.
The Islamabad district administration logged the first emergency call at about 6:45 a.m.; the inquiry report puts the call to the Capital Emergency Service at 6:54, with crews arriving around 7:01. Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said rescuers reached the scene within six or seven minutes of being called. The flames never left the nursery, which sits inside the Mother and Child Health ward alongside the gynecology and obstetrics wards; 73 patients were evacuated from the floor.
Nobody Has Established the Cause
Four explanations have been put forward and none has been adopted. Rescue officials blamed an air-conditioning compressor on the day, and Kamal said camera footage showed a spark in the air conditioner followed by a fireball. The hospital’s own preliminary account blamed a nebulizer attached to an incubator and expressly ruled out both the compressor and a short circuit. The Capital Development Authority fire brigade named a short circuit or plug overload as the probable cause — contradicting the hospital on the same point. A separate hospital-sourced version had wires sparking near the oxygen points.
The committee appointed by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif declined to choose. An electrical or equipment-related origin “remains plausible,” its interim report found, but the evidence did not establish whether an incubator, warmer, air conditioner, plug, socket or length of wiring started it, and it would be premature to name any component. “The precise ignition source remains technically unresolved,” the report ultimately concluded.
What the committee did settle was everything that turned a fire into 14 deaths. The neonatal ward had no fire alarms and no sprinklers. Only two of the hospital’s 13 standard operating procedures addressed fire or emergencies. No supervisory staff was on duty — two nurses, a female security guard and a house officer. Several emergency exits were locked or obstructed, and firefighters had to force the doors themselves, which the report called a serious prima facie deficiency. And PIMS had done nothing after a fire in its own nursing hostel on July 6.
The hospital disputes the exits. Every emergency exit was fully open and operational, PIMS said, and staff fought the blaze with all 35 fire extinguishers on hand. Relatives at the gates said otherwise, and one told Al Jazeera the doors are routinely locked from outside to prevent infant theft.
Eight Suspended, No Case Filed
Sharif removed Federal Health Secretary Muhammad Aslam Ghauri the day of the fire and suspended him for 120 days. On August 29, after reading the interim report, he approved the suspension of eight more officials and ordered departmental and criminal proceedings against them and against the hospital’s contracted security firm. Among them: the executive director, the head of neonatology, the joint executive directors of the maternity ward, the director general of Capital Emergency Services and an assistant director of security. The nurse who carried a baby out received a million rupees and the Sitara-i-Khidmat.
Twelve days later, none of the criminal proceedings had begun. A PIMS official told a Senate committee on September 10 that no first information report had been registered. The panel, chaired by Sen. Samina Mumtaz Zehri, ordered one filed immediately, along with the attachment of the suspended officials’ assets and their placement on the Exit Control List. No arrests have been reported.
The families told the same committee the compensation did not match what they had lost. The federal government announced five million rupees per family on August 27; a fresh assessment was ordered. The 14 babies were buried in their families’ home towns the same day the money was announced.
Grief and Anger Outside the Ward
“The scene is unbearable in the ward,” Noreen Khan, a senior nurse, told CBS News by telephone. The infants who died, she said, had been alive for barely a day or two.
Amir Abbasi said the nephew he lost was the first boy born into his family in years. “I touched his soft face and hand yesterday,” he said. Mohammad Sami, who had given birth three days earlier, said her infant was in intensive care when the flames broke out. “I don’t know what to say or who to blame. I have lost my child.”
Where It Stands
The committee’s final report, which was to fix individual responsibility, was due on August 30. It has not been published. The Islamabad High Court has twice intervened: on August 31 the chief justice demanded the inquiry report and an accounting of what action had been taken, and on September 5 the court gave respondents 15 days to reply to a petition seeking preservation of the CCTV footage, duty rosters and maintenance records.
Pakistan has meanwhile churned through health secretaries. A third took office this week, the second replacement since the fire. President Asif Ali Zardari, calling the deaths heartbreaking and an irreparable loss, pressed for strict action against anyone found negligent and for fire-safety measures to be enforced at hospitals across the country.
Patients from across the region who cannot afford private care rely on PIMS. Its maternity building, where the fire started, delivers and treats infants around the clock. Whether anyone is held responsible now rests on a report that is two weeks late.