Fatal North Macedonia nightclub inferno leads to outrage, disbelief and calls for punishment
KOCANI, North Macedonia — As families gathered at a hospital for updates, Tomco Stojanov already knew his son's devastating fate: 25-year-old Andrej died trying to save others in a nightclub fire that left dozens dead in North Macedonia, including many trampled during a desperate bid to escape.
'Thank you for your condolences, but my pain is incurable. The wound is incurable,' Stojanov said, holding up a photograph of his son, clean-shaven and wearing a suit jacket.
'He died while returning and entering to save other people. And he was pushed, run over, that's how my son died.'
North Macedonia is grappling with the loss of dozens of young lives in Sunday's nightclub inferno in the eastern town of Kocani, and trying to hold those responsible to account and prevent another calamity.
Authorities were investigating allegations of bribery surrounding the fire in the nightclub, which was crammed with young revelers and at double capacity. Kocani's mayor resigned Monday over the emerging scandal.
Fire tore through the overcrowded Club Pulse during a live concert, leaving 59 people dead and more than 150 injured from burns, smoke inhalation and trampling in the panicked rush toward the building's single exit.
Videos showed sparking pyrotechnics on the stage hitting the club's ceiling and igniting the blaze as a band played.
Bribes to authorities to skip licensing requirements and skirt safety regulations are commonplace in North Macedonia, practices that have caught the attention of Western governments.
The European Union has repeatedly expressed concerns over pervasive corruption in the country, identifying it as a major obstacle to the country's accession to the bloc.
Silent protests against corruption were held Monday in Kocani, joined by thousands of residents and separately by university students in Skopje.
'Justice is expected, that is what we all expect so that there are no such similar situations in the future,' Stavre Janev said at the Kocani protest.
The protesters' anger boiled over, with some toppling a van and smashing windows of a storefront — both belonging to one of the club owners.
The latest in a string of deadly nightclub fires around the world, Sunday's tragedy shook this nation of 2 million, where close-knit extended family bonds made the disaster personal to many. Clubgoers as young as 16 were among the casualties, and the nation declared seven days of mourning.
'We are all in shock, and I am shocked myself: as a mother, as a person, as a president,' North Macedonian President Gordana Davkova Siljanovska said in an address to the nation Sunday night.
North Macedonia's government ordered a sweeping three-day inspection at all nightclubs and cabarets across the country, starting Monday.
State prosecutor Ljupco Kocevski said a preliminary inspection of the Club Pulse nightclub had revealed numerous safety code violations, including a lack of emergency exits, an insufficient number of fire extinguishers and improper access for emergency vehicles.
The fire caused the roof of the single-story building to partially collapse, revealing the charred remains of wooden beams and debris.
'The omissions are significant. I can confidently say that this is a failure of the system,' the prosecutor told reporters, also noting the lack of an overhead extinguisher system and fire alarms, and the use of flammable materials to line the inside walls.
Speaking to reporters in Skopje, Interior Minister Panche Toshevski said it appeared the club's owners paid bribes to former officials to issue a forged license and turn a blind eye to the venue operating far beyond capacity and in violation of fire code. Former economy minister Khreshnik Beteshi was being questioned at a police station in Skopje, his lawyer Elenko Milanov told reporters.
The country was in mourning as people watched harrowing scenes in the town of 25,000 people, where rescuers for hours carried out the grim task of removing the charred bodies of clubgoers.
A state coroner said the bodies were being brought for identification in batches from morgues due to the high number of people killed.
Flags around the country have been lowered to half-staff, and the death toll may rise further, with 20 of the injured in critical condition, Health Minister Arben Taravari said.
Neighboring and nearby countries — Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia and Turkey — along with a number of others have already accepted some 50 patients with the most serious injuries, while several countries are also sending medical teams to North Macedonia, officials said.
'All patients who have been transferred abroad are currently in stable condition. We hope it stays that way and that we will receive positive news from abroad,' Taravari said.
Officials said 10 people remain in police custody for questioning in Kocani, some 72 miles east of the capital, Skopje. Interior Minister Panche Toshkovski added that a preliminary inspection revealed the club was operating without a proper license. He said the number of people inside the club was at least double its official capacity of 250.
Condolences poured in from leaders around Europe as well as from the office of the hospitalized Pope Francis.
Late Sunday, Kocani's residents held a candlelight vigil in support of mourning families, waiting in long lines to light church candles.
Beti Delovska, an economist from Skopje, said North Macedonia has never experienced a tragedy like this, with dozens of young people vanishing in minutes. She noted that many young people with bright futures had already left the nation, in search of opportunities elsewhere.
North Macedonia 'is on its deathbed,' Delovska said. 'We have no more credible institutions, the health system is completely dismantled, education is poor, judiciary is partisan and corrupt to the bone,' she said.
'I do believe now that only God can save [North] Macedonia.'
Testorides and Bajrami write for the Associated Press. Testorides reported from Skopje, North Macedonia .
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
18 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Iran says Fordo equipment moved to secure area before Israeli attack
Iran moved equipment to safety ahead of an attack on the well-fortified Fordo nuclear facility, an official said on Saturday after Israel targeted sites throughout the country. The damage outside the facility is manageable, said Behrus Kamalwandi, spokesman for the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization, state news agency IRNA reported. Most of the equipment and materials had been moved to secure areas, he said. The Fordo nuclear facility includes centrifuges for uranium enrichment at the site located about 100 kilometres south-west of Tehran. The facility is located deep underground and is protected by anti-aircraft guns. Iran did not inform the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of the facility's existence until 2009, two years after its construction, after US and allied Western intelligence agencies learned of it. Even before Israel's major attack, experts warned that Iran could move highly enriched uranium to secret locations and secure it in the event of war. They said such an attack would only encourage the Iranian leadership to seek nuclear weapons as a deterrent. The conflict began with Israel's large-scale assault launched by Israel early on Friday. According to Iranian officials, dozens of people were killed, and hundreds more injured. Most victims were civilians, including women and children. Israel, the only nuclear power in the region, primarily targeted Iran's nuclear programme with its massive attack and said more than 100 targets were hit, including sites in Tehran, Tabriz and Shiraz, as well as the Natanz uranium enrichment facility.
Yahoo
19 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Israeli defence chief warns of 'high price' for Tehran over strikes
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz issued a stark warning to Iran and its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei threatening severe consequences if attacks on Israeli civilian areas continue. "If Khamenei continues to fire missiles at the Israeli civilian population, Tehran will burn," Katz said on Saturday in a statement. His comments came after overnight Iranian missile strikes reportedly killed at least three people in Israel. "The Iranian dictator is holding the people of Iran hostage and showing that they, especially the residents of Tehran, will pay a high price for the criminal damage inflicted on Israeli citizens," Katz said. Iran's waves of ballistic missiles and drone strikes on Israel is viewed as retaliation for Israel's unprecedented large-scale airstrikes early on Friday, which targeted the country's nuclear sites, senior military officials and top scientists. Both sides have reported casualties, and despite growing international pressure for de-escalation, neither appears willing to step back from the conflict as it enters its second day. Because other states are coming to Israel's defence, Tehran is now threatening them too. Meanwhile, Iran has also issued warnings to Western powers. Iranian media outlets reported on Saturday that Tehran has notified France, Britain and the United States of potential future strikes should they continue supporting Israel's defence efforts. Countries involved in Israel's defence against Iranian attacks would therefore have to expect attacks themselves, according to the Iranian leadership. Regional military bases of allied states and ships in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea were named as possible targets in the media reports.
Atlantic
an hour ago
- Atlantic
No More Student Visas? No Problem.
Just how mad is Beijing about President Donald Trump's decision to revoke student visas for Chinese nationals? Not as mad as it says, and not as mad as one might expect. Publicly, China's leadership will likely complain that Trump's action is yet another attempt to thwart the country's rise. But in reality, Beijing would probably just as soon keep its smartest kids at home. Late last month, the U.S. State Department announced that it would 'aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields,' and that it would 'enhance scrutiny' of the applications it received in the future. The new visa policy, a spokesperson said, is meant to prevent China from exploiting American universities and stealing intellectual property. A spokesperson for the foreign ministry quickly registered Beijing's objection to the new policy. But when Chinese leader Xi Jinping spoke with Trump by phone last week, either he didn't raise the new visa policy or his foreign ministry didn't regard his comments on the matter worth including in its official summary of the call, which suggests that the issue is not a top priority in Beijing's negotiations with Washington. One reason for this underwhelming response may be that re-shoring its university students serves Beijing's current agenda. China first opened to the world in the 1980s; in the decades that followed, securing a Western education for its elite helped the country bring in the technology and skills it needed to escape poverty. China was 'sending people out, learning from other places, finding the best quality wherever it was, and bringing that quality back to China,' Robin Lewis, a consultant for U.S.-China education programs and a former associate dean at Columbia University, told me. Now that period has given way to one of nationalism and self-reliance, which means promoting China's own companies, products, technologies—and universities. Rose Horowitch: Trump's campaign to scare off foreign students Xi has consistently stressed the importance of education in sustaining China's rise. His government has invested heavily in China's schools and lavished resources on science and technology programs, with some success. Some of China's top institutions, such as Tsinghua University in Beijing, have gained international recognition as serious competitors in scientific research. China would like to have its own Harvards, rather than sending its elite students to the United States, for political and cultural reasons as well as economic ones. Chinese authorities have long worried that the hundreds of thousands of students it exports to America will absorb undesirable ideas about democracy and civil liberties—and that they will access information about China that is suppressed at home, such as the story of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. In fact, many young Chinese who study in the United States seem to enjoy American freedoms and seek to stay rather than return to serve the motherland. Beijing has tried to deal with this in part by monitoring the activities of its students in the U.S. and attempting to hold them firmly to the party line, including by harassing the families back home of those who stray. Within China, authorities can more easily confine students inside the government's propaganda bubble, which in recent years has become more airtight. Domestic media seek to portray the U.S. as unsafe, especially for Asians, by highlighting incidents of racial discrimination, violence, and disorder. One story published last year by the state news agency Xinhua, under the headline 'Chinese Students' Dreams Turned Into Nightmares at U.S. Doorstep,' tells the harrowing tale of a Chinese student detained and deported at an airport and claims that others had suffered the same fate. China's top spy agency, the Ministry of State Security, warned Chinese students at universities abroad against being recruited as foreign agents, and told of one such unfortunate national who was discovered and punished. Even before Trump's announcement, this climate of mutual distrust had led to a drop-off in Chinese students enrolled in American universities. The number had reached an all-time high during the 2019–20 academic year, topping 372,000, according to the Institute of International Education. But that figure has fallen since—by a quarter, to 277,000, in the 2023–24 academic year. Now India, with more than 331,000 enrolled, sends more students to American institutions than China does. The Trump administration appears to believe that curtailing Chinese access to American technology, money, and, in this case, education will give the U.S. the edge over its closest competitor. In some areas, this might work: Restricting the export of advanced U.S. semiconductor technology to China seems to have helped hold Beijing's chip industry back. So why not do the same with higher education? A case can be made that keeping Chinese students out of some of the world's top research institutions will hold back their skills acquisition and, with it, the country's progress. Adam Serwer: Trump is wearing America down In practice, though, the effect of this policy could be hard to gauge. The engineers behind the Chinese AI firm DeepSeek, which wowed Silicon Valley by developing a competitive chatbot on the cheap, were mainly locally trained. And the skills that Chinese students can't find at home they can seek in any number of places. There may be only so many Harvards, but Chinese students can receive a good education—and a warmer reception—in countries other than the United States. Universities in Japan and Hong Kong are already trying to capitalize on Trump's harassment of international students to lure them. The idea that any American policy can effectively dampen Chinese ambition may be far-fetched. 'People wake up in the morning and it's all about education here. There is nothing more important,' James McGregor, the chair for China at the consulting firm APCO, told me. 'You're going to stop Chinese people from learning the top skills in the world? No. They'll just deploy them somewhere else.' For now, the Trump team can't seem to decide whether it wants to get tough on China or make deals with China, and the new student-visa policy reflects this confusion. 'Chinese students are coming. No problem,' Trump said in a briefing after his call with Xi. 'It's our honor to have them, frankly.' China's leadership surely knows that many Chinese families still aspire to send their young-adult children to American universities. But Beijing is much more single-minded than Washington about the future of relations between the two countries: Xi appears to see Washington as the primary impediment to China's rise, and ties to the U.S. as a vulnerability best eliminated. From that viewpoint, relying on Harvard to train China's most promising students is a national-security risk. That means that Trump may be doing Xi a favor.
