Sunday 27 January 2013

Kiss club fire: Death toll hits record 245

At least 245 people died early Sunday when a fire tore through a nightclub packed with university students in the southern Brazilian city of Santa Maria.
The death toll from the inferno rapidly increased as firefighters searched the charred remains of the “Kiss” club, believed to have been packed with 300-400 revelers at the time of the blaze.
 
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff cut short a visit to Chile, where she was attending a European and Latin American summit, to head to Santa Maria and oversee the response to the tragedy.
The fire started at about 2 a.m. A stampede ensued immediately as party goers pushed and shoved each other to escape.
The cause of the fire is not yet known, officials said. A police spokesman told a radio station that a truck carrying 70 bodies arrived at the Municipal Sports Center, which they used as an improvised morgue.



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