Pakistan, Aug. 28 -- Every family that brought a child to PIMS's critical-care nursery had entrusted the hospital with a life too new and fragile to be cared for anywhere else. These were newborns who needed oxygen, incubators and watchful hands in their first hours or days of life. Their parents had entrusted them to the largest public hospital in the federal capital.

By Wednesday morning, 14 of those children were dead. One relative was left giving a DNA sample for a baby born three days earlier.

As of now, the cause remains unsettled. The first official account spoke of a spark near an air-conditioning unit, followed by a fire intensified by an oxygen supply. A parliamentary health committee, after visiting the site, says the source ...