BUCHAREST, Romania -- Seven more people died of burn-related injuries Saturday, just over a week after a fire broke out in a Bucharest nightclub, authorities said, raising the death toll to 39.
Many in Romania have blamed lax government safety standards for the deadly blaze. Prime Minister Victor Ponta and his Cabinet resigned Wednesday after mass protests.
Adrian Stanculea, spokesman for the state burn hospital, said three men died there Saturday, while the manager at University Hospital, Catalin Cirstoiu, said a man there died of his injuries.
Raed Arafat, an emergency situations official, said two patients who had been sent to the Netherlands for specialized burn treatment had died, including a 20-year-old Italian woman. Eight patients were transported by military plane to the Netherlands for treatment, he said.
Interim Prime Minister Sorin Campeanu said a patient at the Floreasca emergency hospital in Bucharest also died of his injuries.
Campeanu said earlier that 109 other people remain hospitalized, 48 of them in serious or critical condition, from the Oct. 30 blaze that broke out at the Colectiv basement nightclub during a heavy-metal concert. Panicked people fled for the sole exit in a stampede, leaving 180 injured.
Late Friday, several thousand protesters gathered in Bucharest for the fourth-consecutive evening, waving Romanian flags and calling for better governance and an end to corruption.
Some protesters played drums and sang in memory of the rock band Goodbye to Gravity, which was playing at Colectiv when a spark from a pyrotechnic show ignited foam decor, setting off an inferno.
A Section on 11/08/2015