MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina: Grief mixed with fury.

Relatives of the 177 people who died in a fire that broke out on Thursday night in a Buenos Aires rock club yesterday started burying their bodies as some 3,000 demonstrators gathered in front of the local City Hall blaming Mayor Aníbal Ibarra for Argentina's worst non natural disaster ever

A flare fired from the audience ignited the packed club in the Once neighbourhood where locked exit doors trapped young New Year's revellers in smoke and flames, also injuring over 700 people. Children and babies were among the victims. The flare sent burning debris and black smoke into a crowd of roughly 4,000 concert-goers, far beyond the site's capacity of 1,100.

Mayor Ibarra said yesterday that locking truck-sized emergency exits ? to prevent concertgoers from sneaking in without paying ? was a "crime." He said that if the doors had not been locked the number of victims would have been much lower. Ibarra also said that he was considering possible responsibilities by city officials. Meanwhile, hundreds of relatives of the victims marched about 30 blocks from the site of the tragedy to the City Hall demanding the resignation of Ibarra and holding him as equally responsible as club owner Omar Chabán, a well-known promoter of the capital's underground rock scene who fled his club in the gritty working-class Once district and was arrested on Friday.

The demonstrators called for a pot-and-pan banging protest at 8pm tomorrow to demand punishment for those responsible.

The City Hall said that it did not know how many people were at the República Cromagnon club. Some media estimated the crowd figure at 6,000.

President Néstor Kirchner ? in his Santa Cruz home province for the New Year ? was deeply moved and decreed a three-day national mourning and ordered nightclubs in the capital closed on New Year's Eve.

Ibarra ordered dancing at nightclubs in the city suspended for two weeks as new legislation on the issue is being considered.

The tragedy in República Cromagnon won worldwide coverage and prompted several governments to express their condolences, among them Brazil, Chile, Venezuela, Spain and the Vatican.

Relatives of the victims started burying them yesterday while others were still gathered in front of the city morgue and hospitals waiting for the wounded and to recover bodies. Several bodies were not yet identified because their fingertips were burnt. Yesterday evening over 40 of the wounded remained in intensive care units. Twenty seven people died at the site of the tragedy and the rest in state-run or private hospitals. Over 90 percent of them died due to the inhalation of carbon monoxide and cyanide from burning plastics. Some were crushed in a stampede as they tried to escape debris falling from the ceiling.

"They were condemned to walk into a trap," said Interior Minister Aníbal Fernández after inspectors found that four of the six doors were firmly shut tight with wire or padlocks.

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 Gastón, 22, a survivor who was looking for friends in the morgue.

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.

Nearly 20 hours after the blaze, relatives lost patience in the oppressive summer heat and demanded authorities turn over their family members' bodies. But that may take a week.

"Give us the kids," shouted one woman at the morgue. "Stop doing autopsies. We already know what happened."

Before the concert, the Los Callejeros rock band playing at the club had warned the crowd not to shoot flares. One member of the band is reported missing.

On Friday afternoon, sitting on the steps of the nearby Ramos Mejía public hospital, where many of the victims were brought, Jorge Ramírez, a 31-year-old construction worker, recalled the moment the club caught fire. ??It was chaos, fire everywhere, then suddenly everything turned black when the lights went out,'' he said. His face was bandaged and he was missing a front tooth lost in the struggle to flee. ??The fireworks were set off when the band had just started their show. The exits were closed, we had to escape through the same door we entered.''

The nightclub fire recalled a blaze that swept a Paraguayan supermarket in August, killing 434 people in an Asunción suburb. Authorities later said the doors were ordered shut by the store's owner to prevent looting.