Islamabad, fire in public hospital nursery: at least fourteen newborns dead

The new development this afternoon comes from Islamabad, and it was not in the 6:30 edition. On Wednesday 26 August 2026, around seven in the morning, a fire broke out in the nursery of the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, the largest public hospital in the Pakistani capital. At least fourteen newborns have died.

The numbers, and the gap between them

The count is not single, and it is worth keeping it separate by source. The federal Minister for Health, Mustafa Kamal, confirmed the deaths of fourteen children. Health officials cited by CBS News reported that at least fifteen newborns were in the ward and that only one was rescued. The Pakistani broadcaster Geo TV, citing hospital sources, instead put the toll at fifteen victims.

Fourteen is the figure confirmed by an identified health authority; fifteen is the figure reported by a broadcaster citing sources inside the hospital. We are publishing both, attributed, without choosing between them: in the early hours of an event like this, the difference between the two numbers often depends on who was counted where, and it is clarified only by the official list of victims.

None of the sources consulted provides identifying details of the children, and this newspaper will not seek any: the rule on minors applies also — especially — when the minors are victims.

What is known about the cause

According to emergency service sources cited by CNN and by CBS News, the fire is believed to have been triggered by the explosion of an air conditioner compressor inside the ward. This is an account from responders, not a technical finding: the conditional tense stands.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has ordered an immediate inquiry into the incident and issued a statement, reported by Al Jazeera, in which he said he was “deeply saddened by this tragic incident” (transl. from English). At the time of publication, neither the body tasked with the inquiry nor the timeline for its findings is known.

This newspaper does not cover investigations and proceedings — this is a suspension stated in our charter — and will therefore not follow the judicial side of the matter. It will instead follow what falls under public health and building safety: which systems were in operation, with what checks, and what changes in the country’s hospital facilities.

The structural context

The fact that makes this episode less isolated than it appears is systemic, not incidental. The cited sources note that building fires are frequent in Pakistan and that safety regulations are often disregarded: in January at least sixty-five people died in a Karachi shopping centre.

A neonatal intensive care ward is, from a systems standpoint, one of the most exposed places in a hospital: it concentrates electrical equipment running continuously, mandatory climate control, and patients who cannot be evacuated on foot. An electrical fault in that spot does not produce the same outcome it would produce elsewhere. This is why, in the health systems that apply them, periodic checks on the systems of critical wards are kept separate from those covering the rest of the facility.

What is missing

It is not known how many people were present in the ward besides the newborns, nor whether there were injuries among staff. It is not known whether the hospital had an automatic fire suppression system in the nursery, nor when the last checks on the air conditioning systems were carried out. There is no public official list of victims allowing the two circulating tolls to be reconciled.

PIMS is a federal public facility in the capital: the decisions that will follow — on the hospital, on the systems, on the protocols — are government decisions, and we will return to them when there are documents to read. The first verifiable document expected is the outcome of the inquiry ordered by Sharif.