A spurned ex-wife started a fire at the second marriage of her former husband which killed 43 women and children, according to police sources in Kuwait.
Maids saw the woman, 23, pouring petrol over the marquee in which the women's celebration was taking place in a town west of Kuwait City.
She was later arrested and made an immediate confession saying she was upset over her "bad treatment" from the groom, who had divorced her.
Colonel Mohamad al-Saber, spokesman for the interior ministry, said: "We have identified the perpetrator, who confessed to committing the crime for personal reasons."
The fire, on Saturday evening, took hold at immense speed, spreading through the flammable upholstered seating and consuming the wedding tent in three minutes.
"There were a couple of hundred women in the tent," Abdullah al-Zafeeri, whose mother and sister are among the injured, told local reporters. "I heard the women screaming. Some children died in the arms of their mothers."
Many of the women and children, who were segregated from the men in separate parties as is conventional for Gulf wedding ceremonies, died after being caught in a stampede for the marquee's only exit.
Rescue services were impeded by the fact that the tent had been erected in a narrow space between residential complexes.
Police were forced to conduct DNA tests on the remains in order to try to identify them. Photographs of the scene showed charred wreckage of tables and chairs, and rows of shoes burned into the ground.
The names of the dead, and of the bride and groom's families, have not been released in accordance with local sensitivities. But local observers said the couple were both members of the extended al-Anzi family, who come from a traditional area of western Kuwait where many Bedouin desert tribes have settled in recent decades.
The bride was said to survived the blaze, since she was still being prepared with make-up and henna and had not yet arrived at the banquet. But her mother and sister were believed to be among the dead. The 23-year-old woman detained over the fire was also said to be an al-Anzi.
The woman has yet to be brought before a court, and her fate is unclear. The death penalty is in force in Kuwait, including for women, although the emirate can offer leniency in the case of mental impairment.
"It all depends on her lawyers and what she tells the court," one source said. "But I think she is bound to get a big sentence, maybe even the death sentence, as the toll is so big. Too many people died."
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