North Macedonia’s Government declared on Thursday the three-day mourning after 14 out of 26 patients died in a fire that engulfed a Covid hospital in the northwestern town of Tetovo last night.

The government said it would accept international aid in investigating the cause of the blaze. The hospital director offered resignation, but it was still not officially accepted.

The fire killed 14 patients, while 12 were recovering in a local hospital. Only a few medical staff were slightly injured.

The country’s Health Ministry offered condolences to the victims’ families and appealed to people not to speculate about the fire and to rely on official information.

A North Macedonia’s Free TV reporter Kristina Atovska told N1 that five prosecutors were working on the case, taking statements from the hospital staff overnight.

She said the hospital had recently been built and that before the last night’s blaze, there were some infrastructural problems.
They were said to have been fixed and could not have caused the fire.