At least 29 people died in a brutal fire that tore through a nightclub and residential building in Istanbul today, the governor of Turkey’s economic capital has declared.
The devastating blaze sparked around 12:45pm local time (09:45GMT) at the Masquerade nightclub which was closed and undergoing renovations.
The club is located on the ground and basement floors of a 16-story residential building in Istanbul’s Besiktas district, and the fire quickly escalated into an inferno which engulfed the entire block.
Shocking images broadcast on Turkish TV showed how thick flames and a column of toxic black smoke gushed from upper-storey windows of the 16-storey-high building.
‘The number of people who lost their lives in the fire (in Istanbul’s Besiktas district) has increased to 29,’ governor Davut Gul’s office said in a statement, updating an earlier toll.
‘One person hurt in the fire was still being treated in hospital,’ it added.
Several people, including managers of the club, were detained for questioning after the Interior Ministry announced it had launched an investigation.
The initial death toll was set at 15, but was increased to 29 this afternoon following a string of statements from the governor’s office, as more victims succumbed to their injuries.
Several of the victims are believed to be workers who were employed to carry out the renovations.
It took a large team of firefighters several hours to extinguish the blaze, with images from within the burnt-out shell of the building highlighting the ferocity of the flames.
Istanbul’s newly re-elected mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, who rushed to the scene, said ‘the fire is under control. Let’s hope there are no further victims’, before offering his ‘condolences’ to the relatives of the dead and injured.
The mayor added that authorities were deployed to inspect the entire building to assess its safety in the wake of the fire.
Meanwhile, Turkey’s justice minister Yilmaz Tunc said police arrested five people for questioning, including managers of the club and one person in charge of the renovations.
The disaster comes days after hotly contested Turkish municipal elections in which Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP party suffered what analysts said was its worst ever defeat.
Top urban centres Istanbul, Ankara, Adana, Bursa and Antalya were among municipalities to elect opposition party CHP mayors on Sunday, less than a year after the knockback of a failed presidential challenge last May.
The deadly blaze also comes just one year after some 55,000 people in Turkey died following one of the country’s most punishing earthquakes in modern history, with Erdogan’s government heavily criticised for a series of perceived failures over renovation projects.
Now, thousands of Turkish citizens affected by last year’s brutal quakes are claiming authorities seized their houses without warning and may force them to pay undisclosed fees to contribute to a ‘redevelopment’ plan.
Huge swathes of southern Turkey and northern Syria were flattened on February 6, 2023 by the huge tremors, and more than 200,000 people in Turkey still living in tent encampments after their homes were demolished.
But even those whose houses remained standing were forcibly evicted after new legislation passed in November allowed the government to seize properties ahead of a planned reconstruction.
According to the regulation, the seizures were to create ‘reserve building areas’ – a temporary measure to allow construction firms to begin work on new developments.
The law stipulated that those affected would be entitled to a property after paying toward construction costs, but gave no details of the financial burden and no way to opt out.