Four jailed as club fire death toll hits 112

FOUR people were ordered to remain in jail yesterday pending an investigation into a nightclub fire that killed at least 112 people in Russia’s worst blaze in decades, investigators said.

About 130 people remained hospitalised, many in critical condition, with injuries from the early Saturday blaze which witnesses said was sparked by onstage fireworks that shot into the decorative twig ceiling of the Lame Horse club in the Ural Mountains industrial city of Perm. Shocked and grieving relatives yesterday began to bury the victims.

The federal Investigative Committee said the suspects – the club’s owner, the executive director, the artistic director and a businessman hired to install pyrotechnics on the night of the blaze – were ordered taken into custody yesterday by Leninsky District Court. They were suspected of negligence causing multiple deaths and violating fire safety rules causing multiple deaths.