A FIRE at a Bangkok night club killed at least 55 people celebrating the New Year last night and injured more than 100, rescue workers said.
"We were all dancing and suddenly there was a big flame that came out of the front of the stage and everybody was running," female partygoer Oh Benjamas said on the street outside the smoking wreck- age of the Santika club.
Dozens of bodies wrapp
ed in sheets lay on the pavement as fire crews moved in to douse the smouldering embers of the club on Ekkamai, a street popular with foreign revellers and high-society Thais.
Many of the bodies were charred beyond recognition and the blaze had completely gutted the building. Rescuers used pick-up trucks to ferry the corpses from the scene.
Witness Tos Maddy, who estimated 400 people were in the building, said he heard what he thought was an elec-trical explosion around 00:30am (17:30 GMT), followed by a stampede for exits. "Everything went boom and we started running. The fire went very quickly." he said.
Others described flames licking the ceiling before it caved in. "I was in the bathroom and when I walked out, I saw flames in the roof and it fell to the floor," said Montika Boontang. 28, in Bangkok Hospital, where most of the injured were being treated.
Police superintendant Suthin Suppuang said 128 people had been injured and the cause of the blaze had not yet been established.
Bangkok's nightspots have often been the subject of safety concerns although they have been incident-free for five years. The Thai capital was hit two years ago on New Year's Eve by a series of small explosions in which several people were killed and dozens injured.
