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 over the weekend.
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.
The building 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 minister of the economy, Kreshnik Bekteshi, for questioning, according to MIA, a state-run news agency. Mr. Bekteshi did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Officers also detained another former official from the ministry, as well as other officials in other government agencies.
“I will have no mercy,” Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski said in a national address 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 that the club, which was in Kocani, a town about 50 miles east of the capital, Skopje, had a license document that had been issued in March last year “for a bribe.”
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