Blaze kills 59 in North Macedonia nightclub |

Skopje:

A fire tore through a nightclub in North Macedonia early Sunday, killing 59 people, apparently after on-stage fireworks set the venue ablaze, authorities said, announcing arrest warrants for four people.

They said 155 injured people had been taken to hospitals across the country, 18 of them in critical condition. Some of the serious cases were to be taken to other European countries for treatment.

The blaze started in the Club Pulse in the eastern town of Kocani around 3:00 am (0200 GMT), as the place was packed with more than 1,000 mostly young fans attending a concert by a popular hip-hop duo called DNK.

“Initially we didn’t believe there was a fire. Then there was huge panic in the crowd and a stampede to get out,” one young woman who was at the concert told local media outside a hospital in the capital Skopje.

Fire crews and paramedics responded quickly and “tried to resuscitate people… but it wasn’t enough”, said the woman.