At least 49 people, all Indian nationals, have been killed in a fire which swept through a building housing foreign workers in Kuwait. More than 50 others were injured in the blaze, which broke out in the six-storey building south of Kuwait City at dawn on Monday. Flames engulfed the lower floors as black smoke poured out of the upper-storey windows, unverified images posted on social media showed. The interior ministry revised the death toll up to 49 from 35 after forensic teams scoured the building. “The number of deaths as a result of the fire in the workers’ building … has risen to 49,” the ministry said. The official Kuwait News Agency quoted the health minister Ahmad al-Awadhi as saying hospitals had received 56 people injured in the fire in the Mangaf area, which is heavily populated with migrant labourers. The building housed 196 workers, according to information given to the interior minister by their employer. Oil-rich Kuwait has large numbers of foreign workers, many of them from south and south-east Asia, and mostly working in construction or service industries. A source in the fire department said the victims suffocated from rising smoke after the fire started at the building’s base. A foreign ministry statement said later the “tragic” fire had “claimed the lives of 49 citizens of the Indian community residing in the State of Kuwait”. India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, called the disaster “saddening” in a post on social media platform X. “My thoughts are with all those who have lost their near and dear ones,” he wrote, as the Indian embassy in Kuwait set up an emergency helpline for updates. India’s minister of state for external affairs, Kirti Vardhan Singh, was also on his way to coordinate assistance and repatriate the dead, India’s foreign ministry spokesperson said. India’s foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, posted that he was “deeply shocked by the news” and offered “deepest condolences to the families of those who tragically lost their lives”. He spoke on the phone with his Kuwaiti counterpart, Abdullah al-Yahya, who “expressed the condolences of the leadership, government and people of the State of Kuwait”, the foreign ministry statement said. Yahya also “called for a speedy recovery for those injured as a result of this painful disaster” and said the Kuwaiti authorities were “harnessing all their capabilities” to assist them. The interior minister, Sheikh Fahd Al-Yousef, said the building’s owner had been detained for potential negligence, adding that any properties violating safety regulations would be closed immediately. “We will work to address the issue of labour overcrowding and neglect,” he said. “We will detain the owner of the property where the fire broke out until legal procedures are completed.” The blaze is one of the worst seen in Kuwait, which borders Iraq and Saudi Arabia and sits on about 7% of the world’s oil reserves.