Deadly nightclub blaze leaves North Macedonia in grief and desperate for accountability

After North Macedonia’s deadliest tragedy in recent memory, with dozens dying in a nightclub inferno, the tiny Balkan nation is struggling to grapple with so many young lives lost while trying to hold those responsible to account and prevent another calamity. The massive fire tore through the overcrowded nightclub early Sunday in the eastern town of Kocani leaving 59 people dead and 155 injured from burns, smoke inhalation and being trampled in the panicked escape toward the building’s single exit. “We are all in shock, and I am shocked myself: as a mother, as a person, as a president,” North Macedonia’s President Gordana Davkova Siljanovska said in an address to the nation Sunday night.