Romania's government declared a three-day national mourning yesterday, after an overnight fire in a Bucharest nightclub killed 27 people and injured 184 during a rock concert that featured fireworks used indoors. In one of the capital's worst disasters in decades, up to 500 people, mostly young adults, stampeded for the only available exit as the club in the basement of a Communist-era sport-shoe factory filled with smoke. Deputy Interior Minister Raed Arafat said 17 of the 27 dead had yet to be identified and 146 people remained in hospital. He said no fire permit was requested by the club nor granted to them by the Bucharest firefighting department.
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