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| Sunday, 2 January 2005 |
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Buenos Aires disco blaze : 175 die, 889 injured Saturday (AFP) Police arrested Friday the owner of a Buenos Aires club where at least 175 people died and 889 were injured in a blaze at the downtown disco crowded with 2,000 teenagers. Mayor Anibal Ibarra said flares set off during the concert ignited the fire and that doors had been "locked with chains and padlocks." "If the emergency exit had been open, so many people would not have died," he told reporters. Mourners began placing flowers around the charred discotheque early Friday, after the fire began late Thursday. Police arrested Omar Chaban, owner of the Cro-Magnon Republic club, who was questioned by a judge, a source at the Interior Ministry told AFP. Charges were not immediately known. "This is a disaster," a stunned Interior Minister Anibal Fernandez told reporters outside the club. He said most of the clubgoers were aged 12-20, although others were under 10, as some Argentine nightclubs provide child care. Fernandez blamed overcrowding and blocked emergency exits, lamenting that young revelers "were caught inside a death trap." The head of Buenos Aires emergency services Julio Salinas said about 102 of the 889 injured were in "critical" condition. The blaze, one of the worst in Argentine history, broke out just before midnight Thursday, at the disco in downtown Buenos Aires, local Health Secretary Alfredo Stein said. |
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