Doors locked at nightclub where inferno killed 175

BUENOS AIRES - A flare thrown from the audience ignited a packed Buenos Aires nightclub where locked exit doors trapped young New Year's revellers in smoke and flames, killing 175 people, officials said on Friday.

Children and babies were among the victims in Thursday night's blaze, which injured at least 714 people, authorities said. The flare sent burning debris and black smoke into a crowd of roughly 4000 people at a rock concert.

"The fire spread in a minute and we were a mountain of people trying to escape," said survivor Ariel Monges, 25, who lost a cousin and was searching for a friend at a hospital.

Mayor Anibal Ibarra said the tragedy was made worse by the owner's decision to lock a truck-sized emergency exit at the club to keep people from sneaking in without paying.

"Because of greed, a lot people who could have been saved lost their lives," Ibarra said.

City Hall said the Cromagnon Republic club had a permit for 1100 people, but it did not know how many were at the concert. Local media estimated the crowd at between 4000 and 6000.

"They were condemned to walk into a trap," said Interior Minister Anibal Fernandez after inspectors found four of the six doors were tied shut with wire or padlocks.

Police said they raided the club owner's home and had a warrant for his arrest.

Hospital lists showed most of the victims were in their teens and 20s. Some fans had brought their children to a makeshift nursery in the women's bathroom or held babies on their laps during the concert, witnesses said.

"There was black smoke everywhere. People started pushing and we all fell down. You had to drag yourself along the floor but people fell on top of each other," said Gaston, 22, a survivor who was looking for friends in the morgue.

Most of the victims died from smoke inhalation after a group fired a flare into the ceiling at 11pm, igniting soundproofing and turning the venue into an inferno.

Officials said 102 of the injured were critical.

The government declared three days of mourning and ordered nightclubs in the capital closed on New Year's Eve.

President Nestor Kirchner, on vacation in Patagonia, said through his spokesman that he was "very sad and distressed," while Pope John Paul 2 sent his condolences to the victims' families in a letter to church authorities.

Argentines awoke on New Year's Eve to scenes of horror on television: bodies lined up on the sidewalk, parents wailing and fainting and others frantically searching for loved ones.

Dazed survivors, blackened by soot, sat sobbing on the sidewalk outside the club or in hospitals.

"I'm looking for my 20-year-old brother. I have his picture and I don't know if it will help but I don't know what else to do," said Monica Alegre, sobbing outside the morgue on Friday.

But there was also anger among desperate relatives, who attacked the mayor for not enforcing safety standards and demanded the club owner be arrested.

"My 10-month-old baby is dead and my wife is missing. Somebody has to take responsibility for what happened to me," Juan, 30, a security guard at the club, said at a hospital.

Fireworks are sold on streets all over Latin America for the New Year holiday festivities with little regulation.

A flare fired a week ago in the same club in the Argentine capital's gritty Once district caused a small fire that was quickly extinguished, barman Gustavo Albornoz told local television.

Before the concert, the band playing at the club had warned the crowd not to shoot flares, the mayor said.

A similar blaze in the United States in February 2003 killed 100 people when a pyrotechnics display at a Rhode Island nightclub ignited soundproofing material.

- REUTERS