Advertisement
Investigating Deadly Nightclub Fire, North Macedonia Detains Officials
At least 59 people died and more than 150 were injured in the inferno. The authorities said the venue’s hospitality permit had been issued illegally.
As families of victims mourned the loss of loved ones and kept an anxious vigil in hospitals on Monday, the authorities in North Macedonia said they were investigating possible official misconduct in the case of a deadly inferno that killed at least 59 people.
Officials said that Club Pulse, the nightclub where the fire broke out early Sunday, was operating with an illegally issued license document, and that it lacked proper escape routes. The building’s roof was set ablaze by fireworks used during a concert, officials have said. At least 155 people were injured in the inferno that swept through the venue.
“I will have no mercy,” Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski said on Sunday, adding, “There is no person in Macedonia who is not broken and with a destroyed spirit after this.”
Mr. Mickoski, who took power in June, said the club, which was in Kocani, about 50 miles east of the capital, Skopje, had a license document that had been issued “for a bribe.” He said the document bore the seal of the economic ministry and the signatures of former officials there, and that it was “issued illegally.”
“This is the culmination of a bad, neglected system,” Mr. Mickoski said, describing North Macedonia’s effort to root out corruption, which the European Commission described in a 2024 report as a “serious concern” in the country.
The building that housed Club Pulse was registered as an industrial facility — not a hospitality venue — but had still received a hospitality permit from the economy ministry, the public prosecutor, Ljupco Kocevski, said on Sunday.
The police summoned a former economy minister, Kreshnik Bekteshi, for questioning, according to MIA, a state-run news agency. Mr. Bekteshi did not respond to a request for comment. Officers also detained another former official from the ministry, as well as other officials in other government agencies.
Ljupco Papazov, the Kocani mayor, resigned on Monday. “The shock and brokenness I feel will last my entire life,” he said on Facebook.
Some parents who had lost children in the inferno had expressed fury with Mr. Papazov for maintaining a low profile the previous day. “Why is the mayor not here?” shouted Dragi Stojanov, whose only child died in the fire, in a video from The Associated Press.
In an online direct message, Mr. Papazov said he had been busy coordinating aid after the tragedy, and that he had resigned for unspecified “moral reasons.”
Mr. Stojanov said he had no reason to live after his 21-year-old son was killed. “I lost everything,” he said.
Mr. Stojanov’s son was one of many young people who had come to Club Pulse to see DNK, a popular North Macedonian group.
As the band performed, sparklers were set off around them, video shows. Those sparklers, officials said, were used illegally and appear to have started the fire. “The pyrotechnic devices used in the nightclub were brought by the band,” the country’s interior minister, Panche Toshkovski, said.
“Unfortunately,” he said, “the person who was responsible for handling them has passed away.”
One member of DNK died, as did other artists performing that night, Biljana Arsovska, a spokeswoman for the public prosecutor, wrote in an email. She said officials had not finished identifying victims.
“I feel as if someone hit me with an aluminum baseball bat,” Tijana Dapcevic, a Macedonian singer who knew some of the victims, said in an interview.
She said a friend of hers, Sara Projkovska, had died in the fire. Ms. Projkovska was a professor at Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, which announced her death in a Facebook post with her picture, smiling under a mane of hot pink hair.
On Monday afternoon, thousands of people gathered in Skopje at the university, in honor of the fire’s victims, news footage showed. Many also gathered to protest in Kocani, news footage shows.
Pictures of the victims had already begun to appear on Macedonian social media, like a yearbook of people whose lives were cut short amid flames and smoke.
One was Petar Ivanovski, a young man with thick eyebrows and a smile, whose university confirmed his death in a Facebook post.
Another, Andrej Lazarov, 25, was a professional soccer player. He was remembered by his team, F.C. Shkupi, in a Facebook photo that showed him playing.
“A lot of children have suffered,” Simeon Sokolov, whose daughter was on a respirator after inhaling smoke, told the Serbian television channel N1 on Sunday night.
“The doctors are doing all they can,” Mr. Sokolov added, “but there are too many injured.”
Image
Many, furious and grieving, pointed to what they saw as gross negligence at the club.
There were no side doors for evacuation, said Mr. Kocevski, the public prosecutor: “Instead, there was only one improvised metal door at the back, which was blocked from the inside.”
The nightclub did not have a functioning hydrant, he added. There were only two fire extinguishers, which he said was not enough for the size of the space.
Jon Hazell contributed reporting.
Advertisement