SANTA MARIA, Brazil — Pablo Bizzi Mahmud might have died in the fire that tore through Kiss nightclub on Sunday morning, but the 20-year-old chose not to go. It turned out to be a fateful decision: 10 of his friends were among the 234 who died as flames and smoke engulfed the club before dawn.  

When asked if any of his friends survived that night he said no. "They were all killed," he said as he walked through the streets of his hometown, Santa Maria.

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"I was born here, I know a lot of people here," he added. "Everybody knows someone who was there."

Mahmud's closest friend made it out but then went back in to help. He lost his life trying to rescue others. Another friend was taken to the hospital with serious injuries. He also perished.

Mahmud has never protested before but on Tuesday he led a march of around 1,000 people through Santa Maria to the mayor's office.

"Justice!" the protesters chanted in Portuguese.

"Police, government, give us justice!" Mahmud shouted to the crowd through a megaphone, his determination driven by his duty to the friends he lost.

Many on the march were friends of the the mostly young people who died in the blaze.

Barbara Henriquez, 28, and Natalia Isaia, 30, knew five who died. They said they had many questions and few answers.

"Brazil doesn't do anything about it," said protester Mariana Barros, 22. "It takes a long time to do anything. We can't wait 10 years — we need it now."

According to local fire chief Moises Fuchs, it's the laws that need to change, and fast. Brazil is hosting both the World Cup soccer tournament next year and the 2016 Olympics.

"We need stronger reforms on our safety regulations," Fuchs said. 

Questions for investigators include why there was no sprinkler system, no fire alarm and only one way out.

Police now believe a flare used during a live music performance inside the club was intended for outdoor use only and may have started the blaze. It is also feared that toxins in the smoke included cyanide and dioxin, making it all the more deadly.

These are all issues the young people of Santa Maria want addressed.

As the march slowed, Mahmud handed the megaphone to another protester and listened. Overwhelmed, he buried his face in the shoulder of a friend.

"I have a Facebook message from one of my friends who was there," Mahmud said. "He is saying let's go to Carnival this year."

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SANTA MARIA, Brazil -— At 2 a.m. on Rua Dos Andradas, a crowd of young people stands in silence. There is nothing to say.

Two nights ago, on this same street, at this same time, a tragedy unfolded that is hard to comprehend. 

Outside the Kiss nightclub, where a blaze and its panicked aftermath claimed the lives of at least 230 partygoers – most of them students at the local university – the smell of smoke lingers in the air.

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Now it has become a place to mourn and remember.

Among the survivors is Adreen Righi, 20, who is still trying to make sense of how the disaster unfolded.

"I was dancing with my friends," she says, recovering at home. "People started pushing. I looked at the stage and there was smoke."

Pushed over in the panic, she was trampled to the ground but still found air. “Breathe, breathe, come on now breathe,” she told herself as others climbed over her.

Then, she recalls, “an angel saved my life.” A woman she didn't know pushed her outside, to safety.

In the fresh air, she hugged her friends. But some were missing.

Her classmate, Juliano, had gone to the bathroom 15 minutes before the fire. She will never see him again.

“He was a good person,” she says, “always smiling. Making jokes. He was a good guy.”

She is “very happy” to be alive, but adds: “I can't explain how I feel about my friends, about the city.”

Santa Maria is in mourning, but there is also growing anger.

Investigators must now seek answers to the questions being asked here: Why did the nightclub apparently have only one exit? Why did fire extinguishers not work, as some witnesses have reported? Why did security staff briefly block exits to stop people leaving without paying their drinks tabs?

On the street outside the nightclub, a hand-made poster says: ‘Nada justifica, 231 assassinatos' – meaning ‘No justification – 231 murdered’.

The final death toll is still unclear, but the message is stark. 

Globo television said 53 seriously-injured victims remain in Porto Alegre, state capital of Rio Grande do Sul,where a support unit has also been set up with psychologists to help relatives of victims.

Police officials said four people are still under temporary arrest over the disaster. Local media reports on Monday said those detained were two owners of the Kiss club and two members of a band whose pyrotechnic display is thought to have set light to the club's sound-proofed ceiling. None of the arrests imply any criminal accusation, police said.

Protesters marched through the town late Monday, carrying flowers, balloons and placards with the names of the victims, according to Globo, which reported that as many as 30,000 took part.

Among them, Eglon Do Canto told The Associated Press: "We hope that the justice system, through its competent mechanisms, succeeds in clarifying to the public what happened, and gives the people an explanation."

Edgar Zuniga Jr, NBC News in Atlanta, contributed to this report.

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Updated at 8 p.m. ET: The day after the Brazil nightclub fire, Mattheus Bortolotto described what he experienced to a local television station: "The emergency exits did not work, and then I lost my friend in the confusion. Then a girl died in my arms. I felt her heart stop beating."

Revelers were celebrating the end of summer late Saturday at the club in Santa Maria when a band’s pyrotechnic display set fire to the soundproofed ceiling and started a fire that claimed 233 lives. Dozens choked to death, and dozens more were trampled in the panic that followed.

The fire appears to have taken a devastating toll on a nearby university: Almost half the victims had ties to the school, many of them there for a party organized by students at Federal University of Santa Maria.

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The Federal University of Santa Maria said Monday that 114 people who died at the Kiss nightclub on Saturday night were students, graduates or dropouts. Most of the students killed had just started at the school.

The school said that its Center for Rural Sciences had lost the most students, 64. Among them were 26 agronomy students and 15 studying to be veterinarians. A notice on the school’s website Monday said that classes would be suspended at least through Feb. 1. About 27,000 students are enrolled there.

Also among those killed were five members of the Brazilian Air Force, according to a statement reproduced by Diario. Santa Maria is home to an air base.  They will be buried in the region.

Read profiles of the nightclub fire victims at Diario de Santa Maria

More than 100 people remain hospitalized for smoke inhalation, the AP reported. 

“It’s impossible to predict what will happen, because they are all in a very delicate state, but there’s hope for all of them,” Dr. Paulo Afonso Beltrame told the AP. He said hospitals in neighboring cities have taken in about 40 patients.

“One of the problems we’re having here is that all these people need to be on respirators and we don’t have enough respirators in the city,” Dr. Beltrame said. 

The city’s mortuary was also backed up, the BBC reported, so bodies were lined up at a local gym. Family members were guided through the gym to identify relatives.

At the gym were Leandro Buss, a computer technician, and his 16-year-old son. 

“I’m burying my wife today,” Buss, 35, told The New York Times. His wife, Marilene Castro, 33, died at the club. “We’ll see who was responsible for this.”

The cemetery, too, has become overwhelmed by the plots that must be dug immediately. The cemetery has hired eight workers in addition to its usual eight and rented two backhoes, according to the Diario de Santa Maria, the newspaper based in Santa Maria, a city of 263,000 in Brazil’s southernmost state. One apparatus failed, forcing workers to dig out the plots with shovels.

Thousands gathered Monday afternoon at a square in the city center for a short service. They hugged tearfully and when the nondenominational service came to an end, they applauded for a long time, according to the Diario de Santa Maria.  

President Dilma Rousseff cut short a visit to Chile, the BBC reported, to visit survivors at a Santa Maria hospital.

"It is a tragedy for all of us," Rousseff told the BBC.

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Three young women and three young men were killed in a fire that tore through a packed nightclub in the northern Serbian city of Novi Sad overnight, police said on Sunday.

Police said the fire appeared to have started in the stage area of the Contrast nightclub during a live performance shortly after 2 a.m. local time (7:00 p.m. ET Saturday)

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The victims, who were in their early 20s, most likely choked to death after locking themselves in the toilets of the club to escape the fire, the head of the interior ministry's emergencies department, Predrag Maric, told state television.

Some 300-350 people are believed to have been in the club at the time.

Investigative judge Ana Stamenic said 50 people had been taken in by police for questioning, including the owner of the club, and that prosecutors were considering charges of "causing general danger."

Novi Sad mayor Igor Pavlicic said the club had only recently carried out a fire drill and was regularly checked for compliance to safety regulations.

In 2008, eight people died in a fire in the Lounge cafe in Novi Sad and three died in a fire at the city's Putnik hotel the previous year.

"This is a great tragedy," Pavlicic told reporters. "The wounds of past tragedies in Novi Sad have yet to heal, and now we have another."

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