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BANGKOK: Mourners laid flowers outside Bangkok's Santika nightclub Friday as authorities raised to 59 the death toll from the blaze that ripped through the venue as revellers rang in the New Year.
More than 200 people were also injured early Thursday at the nightclub in the Thai capital's lively Ekkamai district, in a grim start to 2009.
"The updated death toll is 59. Of the injured, 86 remain in hospital with 38 in intensive care units," Chatree Charoencheewakul, secretary of the emergency services headquarters, told AFP.
A Singaporean national was among those killed, while 41 other foreigners including citizens of Australia, France, Japan and Britain were injured, Chatree said. Twenty-one foreign nationals remain in hospital.
Police began piecing together how so many revellers could have died, but say it may take up to two weeks to determine what caused the fire.
Witnesses and some officials have said a likely cause was a pyrotechnics display on stage soon after patrons rang in the New Year at midnight.
"The deputy national police chief chaired a meeting today and laid out guidelines for police to investigate how the fire broke out," case officer Lieutenant Colonel Prawit Kangwol told AFP.
”The assumptions are a short circuit or small fireworks that triggered the fire inside the club."
Many of the trapped party-goers died of smoke inhalation, while others were crushed to death in the stampede to get out of the front exit. There was a back exit as well, but that was known only to staff members.
Local press Friday carried harrowing witness accounts of people running, screaming and pushing one another though the darkness as flames rained down from the ceiling.
Questions are also being asked about safety standards in Bangkok's many nightspots, and police have vowed to investigate whether the tragedy could have been prevented.
The club, popular with Bangkok's elite, has a capacity of 1,000 people but it was not clear how many were in there at the time of the blaze.
- AFP/yb
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