At least 51 people have been killed and more than 100 have been injured in a fire at a nightclub in North Macedonia, officials say.
A fire was said to have broken out at 3am local time this morning (March 16) at the Pulse club in Kocani, a small town with around 30,000 inhabitants, around 100km (60 miles) east of the capital city Skopje.
Around 1500 people were in attendance for a concert by the hip-hop duo DNK, according to reports from the state news agency MIA.
MIA said “at least 50 people died in a discotheque in Kočani”, where “around 1,500 people attended a concert”.
The concert started at midnight on Saturday (March 15) and was largely attended by young people, per The Guardian.
Injured concert-goers were reportedly taken either to the local hospital in Kočani, which initially reported 90 admissions (per BBC News) or to Štip, about 20 miles south. Many are suffering severe burns and have since been transferred to hospitals in Skopje for further treatment.
Footage shared on social media appears to show the band playing on stage when two flares go off, causing sparks to catch on the ceiling before rapidly spreading. Other clips circulating show the building engulfed in flames.
Со длабока тага ја примив веста за страшната трагедија во Кочани. Ова е тежок и многу тажен ден за Македонија! Загубата…
Posted by Hristijan Mickoski on Sunday, March 16, 2025
Interior Minister Pance Toskovski have speculated that the fire was probably caused by the use of pyrotechnic devices “used for light effect at the concert”.
Toskovski told reporters in front of the Kocani police station that pyrotechnics caused sparks to hit the ceiling, which he alleged was made of highly flammable material, before the fire spread through the rest of the club.
“At the moment of activating the so-called sprinklers, the sparks caught the ceiling that was made of easily flammable material after which for a very short period of time the fire spread across the whole discotheque, creating a thick smoke” he was quoted as having told reporters at the scene. He said some arrests had been made.
We have some more comments from interior minister Panche Toshkovski that are being carried by the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency.
Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski wrote in a statement on Facebook that the government was “fully mobilised and will do everything necessary to deal with the consequences and determine the causes of this tragedy”
He called it a “difficult and very sad day” for the country, which has now lost “so many” young lives.