The joyously moment for the newlyweds, Haneen and Revan turned to a nightmare as fire engulfed the wedding hall in Iraq, killing more than 100 people, while 150 persons are battling for their lives in the hospital.

The fire started while the couple were slow-dancing. Haneen, who was wearing a glamorous wedding dress turns around in horror to see flames rapidly climbing the walls before burning material falls from the roof.

The bride and groom were among the people killed in the deadly blaze according to health officials, while 150 more are injured by the flames, the choking smoke or in the crush to flee the reception hall, which was reduced to charred debris and piles of twisted furniture under a partially collapsed ceiling – 50 critically.

“I thought there had been an explosion,” said Martin Idriss, 19, who was working in the kitchen when the fire broke out Tuesday evening in the venue in the mainly Christian northern town of Qaraqosh.

The flames were devouring the whole hall,” he said.

“When I went back in, I saw the charred bodies of three children,” he said, adding that the venue’s emergency exits had proved “inadequate” for the hundreds of guests trying to escape.

Health authorities “counted 100 dead and more than 150 injured in the fire at a marriage hall in Hamdaniyah”, as the town is also known, Iraq’s official INA news agency reported in what it called a “preliminary tally”.

Wedding guest Rania Waad, 17, who sustained burns to her hand, said that as the bride and groom “were slow dancing, the fireworks (flames) started to climb to the ceiling (and) the whole hall went up in flames”.

We couldn’t see anything,” she said, choking back sobs. “We were suffocating, we didn’t know how to get out.”