At least 109 people were killed and 134 injured when a blaze ignited by fireworks ripped through a packed Russian nightclub, starting a stampede as revellers rushed to escape clouds of toxic black smoke.
The pyrotechnics show went wrong at the Lame Horse nightclub in the Russian city of Perm on Friday night when sparks set fire to wicker coverings on the walls and ceiling during a party celebrating the club's eighth anniversary.
As partygoers rushed for the only door, scores were choked or crushed to death. Medics said many of those hospitalised were being kept alive with respirators and that some had burns of more than 60%.
Some of the severely injured have been sent to specialist burn units in Moscow, St Petersburg and other cities.
President Dmitry Medvedev ordered a national day of mourning for Monday and demanded tough punishment for the owners of the nightclub, who he said had repeatedly ignored warnings from fire inspectors that the premises were unsafe.
‘They have neither brains nor conscience,’ Mr Medvedev told ministers in a televised meeting, criticising the club's owners for failing to come forward immediately after the disaster.
A local resident, who gave her name only as Nelly, said staff and performers, including a friend's daughter, had for the most part escaped through a back door.
‘The lights went out and she crawled out through a back exit. Her clothes were all charred from the fire and black,’ she said.
‘There were fireworks set off at the scene, and one hit the plastic ceiling, setting everything ablaze. People panicked and succumbed to burns, the crush and gas poisoning,’ the Perm region's public security minister Igor Orlov was quoted by ITAR-TASS as saying at the scene of the blaze.
Officials ruled out the possibility that the tragedy was due to a terrorist attack as FSB security service experts found no trace of explosives or other evidence at the scene.
‘The accident was due to a violation of instructions when launching fireworks,’ investigative committee's spokesman Vladimir Markin told Vesti-24 television.
‘There is no chance it was a terrorist act, I can say that 100%,’ Markin added.
The tragedy came a week after a train blast on a busy railway from Moscow to Saint Petersburg killed 26 people and renewed fears of terror attacks in Russia's heartland.
But so-called ‘cold fireworks’, which give off less heat and so can be used indoors, were apparently the conflagration's cause, though they require careful planning, investigators said.
A grainy video from inside the club broadcast on Vesti showed the ceiling starting to blaze. Smoke wisped through the crowd of young party-goers with drinks, who slowly realise what is happening and rush toward an exit.
A government commission was set up to look into the tragedy, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Enforcement of fire safety regulations is known to be lax in Russia, where thousands of blazes are recorded every year and the death rate from fires is several times higher than in the West.
Perm is a city of around 1m people and lies about 1,200km east of Moscow in Russia's Ural mountains.
