North Macedonians have continued to gather in Kocani to hold a vigil for the victims of a nightclub fire on Sunday that killed 59 people and injured 155 others during a concert.
The tragedy focused national attention on corruption in the small Balkan country as authorities detained 15 people. The death toll may rise further, with 20 of the injured remaining in critical condition, according to authorities. The government has declared seven days of national mourning.
The pre-dawn blaze in the eastern town of Kocani left mostly young people dead and injured due to burns, smoke inhalation and a stampede in the desperate effort to reach the building's single exit, officials said.
People as young as 16 were among the casualties, they said.
Videos showed sparkling pyrotechnics on the stage hitting the ceiling followed by scenes of chaos inside the club, with young people running through the smoke as the musicians urged them to escape as quickly as possible.
Vlatko Zdravkov, an eyewitness, said, "It was terrible. Hundreds of people were lying down. We were checking the pulses… first we inspected who had a pulse to save them…to be put in the car and transferred…Those who had no pulse, it was clear – they were set aside… It was terrible, a mass of people... crushed…Some of them were suffocated from the smoke. Most of them have died due to the burns, some from the electric shock from the cables, because the cables were put out… People, what to tell you, those were our children. Our children have died. That’s it!"
The fire was the worst tragedy in recent memory to befall the landlocked nation, whose population is less than 2 million, and the latest in a slew of deadly nightclub fires around the world.
North Macedonia’s government ordered a sweeping inspection to be carried out at all nightclubs and cabarets across the country over the next three days.
Pyrotechnics have often been the cause of deadly fires in nightclubs, including the one at the Colectiv club in Bucharest, Romania, in 2015, in which 64 people died.
(AP)
