At least 59 people were killed and another 155 were injured when a fire broke out overnight in a nightclub in North Macedonia, the country’s interior minister, Panche Toshkovski, said on Sunday.
Mr. Toshkovski told a news conference that the blaze had occurred during a pop concert at the club in the eastern town of Kocani. He said that fireworks had been set off, causing the roof to catch fire.
Mr. Toshkovski said that one police officer had been killed and that 35 of the dead had been identified so far.
Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski called it “a difficult and very sad day” for the country, writing on X that “the loss of so many young lives is irreparable, and the pain of the families, loved ones and friends is immeasurable.”
North Macedonia, a small country of about two million people, is nestled between Albania, Greece, Bulgaria, Kosovo and Serbia. The town where the blaze occurred is about 50 miles east of the capital, Skopje.
“It’s a terrible tragedy,” Ognen Cancarevik, a reporter for Telma, a national television station, said in a phone interview. “People are shocked. People are angry. People want answers, and people want to know who is responsible.”
Kocani is a small town, he said, and many people in the region work in agriculture. 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.”
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