At least 59 people were killed and 155 others were injured when a fire broke out overnight in a nightclub in North Macedonia, the country’s interior minister, Panche Toshkovski, said on Sunday. The blaze — the deadliest national tragedy in recent memory — has horrified the small country in southeastern Europe.
“The loss of so many young lives is irreparable, and the pain of the families, loved ones and friends is immeasurable,” Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski wrote on X.
The police have detained 15 people, including the manager of the club and the son of its owner, Mr. Toshkovski, the interior minister, said. He said that the company that ran the club did not have a license. He added that several former or current officials had been arrested in connection with the case.
“This license — as many other things in the past in Macedonia — is connected to bribery and corruption,” he said. “But I want to tell the Macedonian public that, unlike other times in the past, the people that issue these illegal licenses will be named and be held responsible for it.”
Mr. Toshkovski said that about 500 people had been inside the club but that only 250 tickets had been sold by the club in Kocani, which is about 50 miles east of the capital, Skopje. The blaze ripped through the club in the eastern town of Kocani during a pop concert, he said, adding that fireworks caused the roof to catch fire.
A police officer died while on duty in the club to check for drugs or underage guests, he said.
Patients being treated for injuries were between the ages of 16 and 24, Dr. Kristina Serafimova, the director of a hospital in Kocani, told reporters. Many people died in a stampede, she said, as panicked people tried to escape the blaze.
“It’s devastating,” Goran Georgijev, 47, who lives a short walk from the club, said in a phone interview. He said his neighbor’s daughter, who was 17, died in the fire, as did the sons of two of his friends. They were 21 and 22, he said.
“I can’t even pick up the phone to call them,” Mr. Georgijev said of his friends and neighbors. “I don’t know what to say to them.”
Mr. Georgijev used to go to the nightclub when he was younger, he said, adding that it was poorly built and had a cloth-covered ceiling. He said he heard a cracking sound around 3 a.m., and then the scream of sirens.
“I knew something terrible was happening,” he said, adding, “It is a tragic day for all of us.”
The death toll may still rise. Arben Taravari, the health minister, told reporters that 20 people were in critical condition, and some patients were being sent to hospitals in other countries.
And for many in North Macedonia, a small country of about two million people that borders Albania, Greece, Bulgaria, Kosovo and Serbia, the blaze brought up painful memories of other tragedies.
In 2021, a fire at a hospital for coronavirus patients killed at least 14 people. That same year, 45 people were killed when a North Macedonian tourist bus crashed in flames.
“Every year, we have a fire-connected tragedy,” Ognen Janeski, who heads an ethics council at the Association of Journalists of Macedonia, said in an interview.
While the circumstances of the fire at the club remain unclear, Mr. Janeski said that official corruption had contributed to a number of such accidents in North Macedonia. People were already assuming that was also the case with the latest tragedy, he said.
“There is this overwhelming sense of grief and frustration among the public,” he said. “Nobody believes in the system,” he added.
Some people were drawing connections to Serbia in social media posts, he said. More than 100,000 people marched in protest in Belgrade on Saturday over the deaths last year of 15 people killed by the collapse of a canopy at a railway station. Many blamed the catastrophe on shoddy work tied to corrupt officials.
The government in North Macedonia declared a weeklong national mourning period and ordered an inspection of all nightclubs over the next three days.
“Everyone involved in this tragic event and knowingly contributed to endangering human lives will be brought before the justice authorities and will be held accountable,” the government said in a statement.
The fire is one of several deadly infernos in clubs around the world in recent years. The rooms are often dark, crowded and loud. People can struggle to evacuate quickly — or even realize that there is an emergency.
Last year, at least 29 people were killed in a club fire in Istanbul. In 2023, 13 people died when a club complex caught fire in Spain. A 2015 fire killed at least 27 people in Romania, and one in 2013 killed at least 233 people in Brazil. In 2003, a fire at a club in Rhode Island, which was started by pyrotechnics, killed 100 people.
Ognen Cancarevik, a reporter for Telma, a national television station, said in a phone interview that Kocani — a small town in a region where many people work in agriculture — was devastated by the tragedy.
“People are angry,” he said. “People want answers, and people want to know who is responsible.”
Young people often leave the country to look for work or higher salaries abroad, he said, and many Macedonians are frustrated by low salaries and corruption.
“The morale is low,” Mr. Cancarevik said. “The last thing we need is a tragedy of this scale where young and innocent kids die.”
