Abu Dhabi: A couple who captured a selfie with the burning Dubai hotel in the background on New Year's Eve and posted it on social media came under heavy fire from the Twitterati.
Barely hours before the ushering in of the New Year, a huge fire engulfed a 63-storey luxury hotel The Address Downtown. While the visuals were clicked and posted by many social media users with different hashtags, including #Dubaifire, the photo of the couple posing with a smile with the burning building as a backdrop was clearly not acceptable to several users.
The photograph, as a result, was met with several harsh reactions like "the most inappropriate selfie ever" and "people are stupid".
According to eyewitnesses, the fire started on the lower floor of the Address Downtown hotel from the outside and very quickly spread to the upper storeys.
Officials said one person had a heart attack as a result of the smoke and the rush to get out of the building. Another person was described as being moderately injured and 16 people were said to have suffered minor injuries.
A large fireworks display later went ahead at the world's tallest tower in Dubai, the Burj Khalifa, in front of tens of thousands of people while plumes of smoke continued to billow from the nearby hotel fire.
Last year, Dubai broke the world record for the largest fireworks display on the New Year's Eve, releasing 479,651 shells during the midnight pyrotechnic show, Gulf News reported.
(With Agency Inputs)
