At least 245 people have been killed in a Brazil nightclub after a fire ravaged through the building in the early hours of this morning.
Initial reports were that 90 people perished in the blaze, but the death toll has steadily been rising as more bodies have been found in the packed nightclub. It appears to be deadliest nightclub fire for a decade.
While the official cause of the blaze has not been stated, local reports claim it was sparked by a firework set off during a band's performance.
The total number of victims is still unknown and there may be hundreds injured, civil police and regional government spokesman Marcelo Arigoni told Radio Gaucha.
He told the radio a truck carrying 70 bodies had arrived at the Municipal Sports Centre, which was being used as an improvised morgue.
Police believe there are about 20 bodies still inside the club. At least 200 people have been injured, they said.
Sandro Meinerz, spokesman for the police in the city of Santa Maria, 550km from Porto Alegre, southern Brazil, told local media that the fire broke out at the Kiss club while a band was performing.
Teenagers sprinted from the scene desperately trying to find help - others carried injured and burned friends away in their arms.
'There was so much smoke and fire, it was complete panic and it took a long time for people to get out, there were so many dead,' survivor Luana Santos Silva told the Globo TV network.
Silva added that firefighters and ambulances responded quickly after the fire broke out, but that it spread too fast inside the packed club for them to help.
Michele Pereira, another survivor, told the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper that she was near the stage and that the fire broke out after band members lit flares.
'The band that was on stage began to use flares and, suddenly, they stopped the show and pointed them upward. At that point the ceiling caught fire. It was really weak but in a matter of seconds it spread,' Pereira said.
As news of the tragedy was made public, relatives of the victims began to appear at the scene.
Hundreds of shocked and distraught grieving families gathered in the street, but were kept cordoned off away from the charred Kiss club.
The fire appeared to be among the world's deadliest in a nightclub since a 2004 fire killed 194 people at an overcrowded working-class nightclub in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
A blaze at the Lame Horse nightclub in Perm, Russia, broke out in December, 2009, when an indoor fireworks display ignited a plastic ceiling, killing 152.
A nightclub fire in the US state of Rhode Island in 2003 killed 100 people after pyrotechnics used as a stage prop by the 1980s rock band Great White set ablaze cheap soundproofing foam on the walls and ceiling.
And a welding accident reportedly set off a December 2000, fire at a club in Luoyang, China, killing 309.
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