A fire tore through a nightclub in the eastern town of Kocani in North Macedonia, killing 59 people, according to the country’s interior minister.

More than 100 people were also wounded in the fire early on Sunday in the “Club Pulse”, Interior Minister Pance Toskovsk said.

Toskovski said the fire was probably caused by the use of pyrotechnic devices “used for light effect at the concert”.

As they were set off, “the sparks caught the ceiling, which was made of easily flammable material, after which the fire rapidly spread across the whole discotheque, creating thick smoke,” he said.

The establishment had been packed with more than 1,000 mostly young fans to see a popular hip-hop duo called DNK.

Helicopters ferried some of the injured to hospitals in the capital Skopje, some 100km (62 miles) to the west.

Twenty-seven of them were admitted to the Naum Ohridski clinic, a doctor at the facility, Nebojsa Nastov, told online media outlet SDK.

In September 2021, a major fire killed 14 people at a unit for COVID-19 patients in the northwestern town of Tetovo.

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