At least 59 people were killed and more than 150 injured when fire broke out during a concert at the Pulse nightclub in Kocani, North Macedonia, on the event date of 2025-03-16, according to Al Jazeera’s report citing the country’s interior minister.
The blaze began around 3am, or 02:00 GMT, during a performance by the band DNK. Interior Minister Panche Toshkovski said pyrotechnics were set off inside the packed venue, and the sparks then caught a ceiling made of easily flammable material. The fire spread rapidly through the discotheque and filled the building with thick smoke. Videos posted on social media and described in the report showed stage fountains in use just before the fire took hold.
Emergency services and prosecutors responded at the scene as authorities worked to determine the final number of victims and injured. The Ministry of Internal Affairs said arrest warrants had been issued for four people in connection with the fire, and later reporting in the same article said 20 people had been arrested so far, including an employee of the Ministry of the Economy, which is responsible for issuing licences. That detail pointed to a wider inquiry into how the nightclub was allowed to operate.
Hospitals in Skopje and Kocani were dealing with severe burn injuries and other trauma cases after the disaster. The report said 27 people were hospitalised at Skopje City Hospital and another 23 were being treated at the Clinical Center. It also noted that many of the injured were between 14 and 24 years old. Some of the dead had not yet been identified because they were not carrying documents.
Among the victims named in the report were three members of DNK, along with the group’s backup vocalist and photographer. Their deaths underline the scale of the loss for both the town and the music scene that had gathered there for the concert.
Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski called it a difficult and very sad day for Macedonia and said the loss of so many young lives was irreparable. He urged health services and other relevant institutions to move quickly to help the injured and support families. The report also said neighbouring Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece and Albania offered assistance, while European Council President Antonio Costa and Pope Francis sent condolences.
The fire in Kocani is one of the deadliest nightclub disasters in recent European memory and is likely to prompt scrutiny of venue safety, licensing and enforcement. For a small country, the human toll was immediate and national. For authorities, the urgent task was to care for the wounded, identify the dead and establish how a celebration turned into mass tragedy within minutes.
