78 bodies found 'executed' in Syria river

ALEPPO: The bodies of 78 young men, all executed with a single gunshot, were found Tuesday in a river in Aleppo city, adding to the grim list of massacres committed during Syria's 22-month conflict.

The gruesome discovery came ahead of a briefing by peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to the UN Security Council on the uprising, which the United Nations says has left more than 60,000 people dead.

Abu Seif, a rebel fighter, said 78 bodies were retrieved from the Quweiq River and that 30 more were still in the waters but out of reach because of regime snipers.

"The regime threw them into the river so that they would arrive in an area under our control, so the people would think we killed them," he said.

But a security official accused "terrorists," the regime term for the rebels, of the killings, adding the victims were residents kidnapped from the opposition-held district of Bustan al-Qasr.

Their families had tried to negotiate their release before they were killed overnight, he said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the official SANA news agency said the jihadist Al-Nusra Front carried out the executions.

"Terrorist groups from Al-Nusra Front in Aleppo carried out a mass execution of dozens of abducted people and threw their bodies in the Quweiq River," the agency said.

Al-Nusra, which first gained notoriety for its suicide bombings in Syria, has evolved into a formidable fighting force leading attacks on battlefronts throughout the embattled country.

Its extremist tactics and suspected affiliation to the Al-Qaeda offshoot in Iraq have landed it on the US list of terrorist organisations.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights gave a toll of 65 bodies but warned the figure could rise significantly.

"They are in their 20s and were executed by a bullet to the head. Most of them had their hands tied behind their backs and were in civilian clothes," said the watchdog.

The scene on the bank of the Quweiq was grim, as muddied corpses are dredged out of the water and hundreds of distressed people flocked around to see if they could spot among the bodies a father, a brother, a son or a husband.

"My brother disappeared weeks ago when he was crossing (through) the regime-held zone, and we don't know where he is or what has become of him," said Mohammed Abdel Aziz.

Volunteers helped place on a truck the bodies which were then taken to a school where they were laid out and covered in a blue cloth.

"We do not know who they are -- they were not carrying papers," a volunteer said as an AFP correspondent counted at least 15 bodies on one truck.

A number was placed next to each body and their faces were left uncovered to allow the identification by relatives at the school, where the nauseating stench of death lingers.

"There are those who drowned because they were shot in the legs or abdomen before being thrown into the water," said a nurse, noting some victims may have been killed as far back as three days ago.

The 129-kilometre river originates in Turkey to the north and flows to the southwest of Aleppo, traversing both regime and rebel-held areas.

"This is not the first time that we have found the bodies of people executed, but so many, never," rebel fighter Abu Anas said as he examined the body of a boy of about 12 with a gunshot wound to the back of the neck.

"Jews would not have done this. Their only crime was that they were residents of Bustan al-Qasr and they were Sunni Muslims," a man cried out as he looked down at several of the bodies laying on the pavement waiting to be identified.

Violence raged elsewhere in Aleppo province, where seven children were killed in air strikes on the town of Safireh, the Observatory said, giving a toll of 91 people killed across Syria on Tuesday.

And in Damascus a member of parliament was seriously injured when a explosive device strapped to his car exploded, the Observatory said.

The bloodshed came as rebels captured a vital bridge across the Euphrates River in Deir Ezzor city, largely severing an army supply route to Hasakeh province further north.

The nearby regime security headquarters and a smaller bridge were also captured, prompting retaliatory air strikes on the critical crossings.

"These gains in Deir Ezzor are very important because this strategic city is the gateway to a region rich in oil and gas resources," said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman.

"If the rebels continue to progress and gain control of what is left of military-held positions... it will be the first major city to fall into the hands of the rebels," said Abdel Rahman.

On the humanitarian front charity organisations on Tuesday pledged US$182 million for Syrians displaced at home or who have fled abroad because of the conflict on the eve of a donors conference in Kuwait.

US President Barack Obama announced an extra US$155 million dollars to aid refugees fleeing what he said was "barbarism" propagated by the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

- AFP/jc

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Shah Rukh given security after magazine comments

NEW DELHI: Even as India and Pakistan sparred over Shah Rukh Khan's comments in a magazine recently, security agencies said there was no threat to the superstar from terror elements. In fact, his security was withdrawn three months ago. However, following the comments, he has been given two constables in rotation to guard him against possible "local reprisal".

Khan was first provided security in 2008 following an email threat allegedly from Indian Mujahideen. At that time, he was guarded by four constables in rotation (four during the day and four during the night) provided by Mumbai Police's protection branch.

In early 2010, his security was reviewed and downgraded to two constables in rotation, as there were no fresh threats against him following the 2008 mail. The two-constable security was retained as a preventive measure until the threat was completely ruled out, sources said.

A fresh assessment was conducted in October 2012 and Khan's security was completely withdrawn in November. "There was no fresh threat nor any inputs from intelligence agencies indicating any threat to his life from internal or external forces. So it was decided that his security may be withdrawn," an officer from Mumbai's security establishment said.

However, following his comments in a magazine where the superstar alluded to his religious identity being politicized by certain outfits and the harassment he faced in certain countries because of being a Muslim, Mumbai Police restored his security because of local reasons. "We feared his comments could have reactions from local outfits. So, as a precautionary measure, we have restored his security temporarily four days ago."

Sources said the security may be removed after the local threat dissipates.

Following Khan's comments, LeT chief Hafiz Saeed had invited him to live in Pakistan while the country's interior minister Rehman Malik asked India to provide security to the star on Tuesday. A security officer clarified, "Shah Rukh's security was restored much before Malik's comments. In any case, security is provided after local threat assessment and not on the basis of what anyone inside or outside the country says."

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Soldier looks forward to driving with new arms

BALTIMORE (AP) — A soldier who lost all four limbs in a roadside bombing in Iraq says he's looking forward to driving and swimming with new arms after undergoing a double-arm transplant.

"I just want to get the most out of these arms, and just as goals come up, knock them down and take it absolutely as far as I can," Brendan Marrocco said Tuesday.

The 26-year-old New Yorker spoke at a news conference at Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he was joined by surgeons who performed the operation.

After he was wounded, Marrocco said, he felt fine using prosthetic legs, but he hated not having arms.

"You talk with your hands, you do everything with your hands, basically, and when you don't have that, you're kind of lost for a while," he said.

Marrocco said his chief desire is to drive the black Dodge Charger that's been sitting in his garage for three years.

"I used to love to drive," he said. "I'm really looking forward to just getting back to that, and just becoming an athlete again."

Although he doesn't expect to excel at soccer, his favorite sport, Marrocco said he'd like to swim and compete in a marathon using a handcycle.

Marrocco joked that military service members sometimes regard themselves as poorly paid professional athletes. His good humor and optimism are among the qualities doctors cited as signs he will recover much of his arm and hand use in two to three years.

"He's a young man with a tremendous amount of hope, and he's stubborn — stubborn in a good way," said Dr. Jaimie Shores, the hospital's clinical director of hand transplantation. "I think the sky's the limit."

Shores said Marrocco has already been trying to use his hands, although he lacks feeling in the fingers, and he's eager to do more as the slow-growing nerves and muscles mend.

"I suspect that he will be using his hands for just about everything as we let him start trying to do more and more. Right now, we're the ones really kind of holding him back at this point," Shores said.

The procedure was only the seventh double-hand or double-arm transplant ever done in the United States.

The infantryman was injured by a roadside bomb in 2009. He is the first soldier to survive losing all four limbs in the Iraq War.

Marrocco also received bone marrow from the same donor to minimize the medicine needed to prevent rejection. He said he didn't know much about the donor but "I'm humbled by their gift."

The 13-hour operation on Dec. 18 was led by Dr. W.P. Andrew Lee, plastic surgery chief at Hopkins.

Marrocco was being released from the hospital Tuesday but will receive intensive therapy for two years at Hopkins and then at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda.

After a major surgery, human nerves regenerate at a rate of an inch per month, Lee said.

"The progress will be slow, but the outcome will be rewarding," he added.

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Associated Press Writer David Dishneau contributed to this story from Hagerstown, Md.

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Boy Scouts to Discuss Lifting National Gay Ban

The Boy Scouts of America, under growing pressure from troops across the country to end its 100-year-old ban on gay leaders and members, said today it is "discussing" ending its national discrimination policy, leaving such decisions to the discretion of individual troops.

"Currently, the BSA is discussing potentially removing the national membership restriction regarding sexual orientation," BSA spokesman Deron Smith said in a prepared statement.
"This would mean there would no longer be any national policy regarding sexual orientation, and the chartered organizations that oversee and deliver Scouting would accept membership and select leaders consistent with each organization's mission, principles, or religious beliefs."

Individual members and parents would be able to set policy guidelines as they see fit when organizing their troops and leadership, according to the statement.

The BSA will review the matter at its regularly scheduled board meeting next week, Smith said.

Rich Ferraro, a spokesman for the gay advocacy group GLAAD, pointed to two factors upon hearing the announcement today.

"I think it was a mix of the change.org petitions and the corporate sponsors that had dropped out," Ferraro said.

Last September, the Intel Foundation announced it would end $700,000 in annual donations to the Boys Scouts. The Merck Foundation also severed its ties in December.

"UPS adopted a new policy that stated that grantees had to follow their nondiscrimination policy," Ferraro said. "There were also more in the coming weeks that were dropping their support of Scouts."

Several U.S. councils have tried to buck the longtime ban, putting the issue to a vote with their local parents in recent months, including a Boy Scout troop in California and a Cub troop in Maryland.

"I am extraordinarily excited," said Eagle Scout Zach Wahls, who has spent the past seven months heading up Scouts for Equality, which advocates for ending the ban. "It's a positive step, and big change.

"This is absolutely a step in the right direction, but we have a long way to go," Wahls, 21, said today. "Discrimination has no place in scouting."

Wahls, whose parents are lesbians, was a YouTube sensation two years ago when he testified before the Iowa legislature on same-sex marriage.

He delivered a petition in June from change.org with more than 1 million signatures, demanding that the Boy Scouts end the ban on openly gay membership.

"Once an Eagle Scout, always an Eagle Scout," Wahls said at the time. "I am unwilling to quit because of a single policy. They do so many things right."

The policy change under discussion would allow individual groups -- religious, civic or educational ones -- to determine their own rules.

"The national organization has to make it clear to all units that being anti-gay is unacceptable," said Wahls, who identifies as straight. "What happens next is little unclear, but it seems the Boy Scouts of America is starting to thaw on this issue."

BSA's Smith said, "The Boy Scouts would not, under any circumstances, dictate a position to units, members, or parents. Under this proposed policy, the BSA would not require any chartered organization to act in ways inconsistent with that organization's mission, principles or religious beliefs."

In October, California Boy Scout
Ryan Andresen of Moraga, Calif., was denied the coveted Eagle Scout award, even though he had completed all the requirements because he is gay.

His mom, Karen Andresen, was so upset by the troop's decision that she posted a petition on change.org.

A local troop committee approved his award, but the council did not send it on to the national organization because of the gay ban.

Advocacy groups have been vocal on the issue.

"The Boy Scouts of America have heard from scouts, corporations and millions of Americans that discriminating against gay scouts and scout leaders is wrong," GLAAD President Herndon Graddick said. "Scouting is a valuable institution and this change will only strengthen its core principles of fairness and respect."

Until now, the Boy Scouts have stood firm on the issue, even taking it to the highest court.

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Violence flares in Egypt after emergency law imposed

CAIRO (Reuters) - A man was shot dead on Monday in a fifth day of violence that has killed 50 Egyptians and prompted the Islamist president to declare a state of emergency in an attempt to end a wave of unrest sweeping the biggest Arab nation.

Emergency rule announced by President Mohamed Mursi on Sunday covers the cities of Port Said, Ismailia and Suez. The army has already been deployed in two of those cities and ministers agreed a measure to let soldiers arrest civilians.

A cabinet source told Reuters any trials would be in civilian courts, but the step is likely to anger protesters who accuse Mursi of using high-handed tactics of the kind they fought against to oust his military predecessor Hosni Mubarak.

Egypt's politics have become deeply polarized since those heady days two years ago, when protesters were making the running in the Arab Spring revolutions that sent shockwaves through the region and Islamists and liberals lined up together.

Although Islamists have won parliamentary and presidential elections, the disparate opposition has since united against Mursi. Late last year he moved to expand his powers and pushed a constitution with a perceived Islamist bias through a referendum. The moves were punctuated by street violence.

Mursi's national dialogue meeting on Monday to help end the crisis was spurned by his main opponents.

They say Mursi hijacked the revolution, listens only to his Islamist allies and broke a promise to be a president for all Egyptians. Islamists say their rivals want to overthrow by undemocratic means Egypt's first freely elected leader.

Thousands of anti-Mursi protesters were out on the streets again in Cairo and elsewhere on Monday, the second anniversary of one of the bloodiest days in the revolution which erupted on January 25, 2011 and ended Mubarak's iron rule 18 days later.

"The people want to bring down the regime," they chanted Alexandria. "Leave means go, and don't say no!" they shouted.

VOLLEYS OF TEARGAS

Propelled to the presidency in a June election by the Muslim Brotherhood, Mursi has lurched through a series of political crises and violent demonstrations, complicating his task of shoring up the economy and of preparing for a parliamentary election to cement the new democracy in a few months.

Instability in Egypt has raised concerns in Western capitals, where officials worry about the direction of a key regional player that has a peace deal with Israel.

In Cairo on Monday, police fired volleys of teargas at stone-throwing protesters near Tahrir Square, cauldron of the anti-Mubarak uprising. A car was torched on a nearby bridge.

A 46-year-old bystander was killed by a gunshot early on Monday, a security source said. It was not clear who fired.

"We want to bring down the regime and end the state that is run by the Muslim Brotherhood," said Ibrahim Eissa, a 26-year-old cook, protecting his face from teargas wafting towards him.

The political unrest has been exacerbated by street violence linked to death penalties imposed on soccer supporters convicted of involvement in stadium rioting in Port Said a year ago.

As part of emergency measures, a daily curfew will be imposed on the three canal cities from 9 p.m. (1900 GMT) to 6 a.m. (0400 GMT). Residents have said they will defy it.

The president announced the measures on television on Sunday: "The protection of the nation is the responsibility of everyone. We will confront any threat to its security with force and firmness within the remit of the law," Mursi said, angering many of his opponents when he wagged his finger at the camera.

He offered condolences to families of victims. But his invitation to Islamist allies and their opponents to hold a national dialogue was spurned by the main opposition National Salvation Front coalition. Those who accepted were mostly Mursi's supporters or sympathizers.

SENDING A MESSAGE

The Front rejected the offer as "cosmetic and not substantive" and set conditions for any future meeting that have not been met in the past, such as forming a government of national unity. They also demanded that Mursi declare himself responsible for the bloodshed.

"We will send a message to the Egyptian people and the president of the republic about what we think are the essentials for dialogue. If he agrees to them, we are ready for dialogue," opposition politician Mohamed ElBaradei told a news conference.

The opposition Front has distanced itself from the latest flare-ups but said Mursi should have acted far sooner to impose security measures that would have ended the violence.

"Of course we feel the president is missing the real problem on the ground, which is his own policies," Front spokesman Khaled Dawoud said after Mursi made his declaration.

Other activists said Mursi's measures to try to impose control on the turbulent streets could backfire.

"Martial law, state of emergency and army arrests of civilians are not a solution to the crisis," said Ahmed Maher of the April 6 movement that helped galvanize the 2011 uprising. "All this will do is further provoke the youth. The solution has to be a political one that addresses the roots of the problem."

Rights activists said Mursi's declaration was a backward step for Egypt, which was under emergency law for Mubarak's entire 30-year rule. His police used the sweeping arrest provisions to muzzle dissent and round up opponents, including members of the Brotherhood and even Mursi himself.

Heba Morayef of Human Rights Watch in Cairo said the police, still hated by many Egyptians for their heavy-handed tactics under Mubarak, would once again have the right to arrest people "purely because they look suspicious", undermining efforts to create a more efficient and respected police force.

"It is a classic knee-jerk reaction to think the emergency law will help bring security," she said. "It gives so much discretion to the Ministry of Interior that it ends up causing more abuse, which in turn causes more anger."

(Additional reporting by Yasmine Saleh in Cairo, Yusri Mohamed in Ismailia and Abdelrahman Youssef in Alexandria; Editing by Giles Elgood, Peter Millership and Alastair Macdonald)

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US says Iran blast reports not credible

WASHINGTON: The White House on Monday dismissed reports of an underground explosion at Iran's Fordo atomic plant and also accused the Islamic Republic of adopting delaying tactics on nuclear talks.

Iran had previously condemned reports in sectors of the US and Israeli media about the alleged blast as "western propaganda" designed to influence the outcome of its stalled nuclear dialogue with Western powers.

"We have no information to confirm the allegations in that report, and we do not believe the report is credible," White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

The reports cited the conservative American news website WND, which reported that an explosion at the Fordo facility on January 21 had caused major damage and trapped workers.

Iran has several times accused Israel and the United States of taking action to sabotage its nuclear program, through assassinations of its scientists and unleashing computer malware against its facilities.

The Fordo site is dug into a mountain near the holy city of Qom, some 150 kilometres south of Tehran, to protect it against air strikes.

Iran says it has been targeted previously, and blamed an explosion that reportedly cut the power supply to Fordo on saboteurs.

The site, whose existence was revealed by major powers in 2009, began in late 2011 to enrich uranium to purities of 20 per cent, a process at the heart of US and western concerns that Iran is trying to make a nuclear bomb.

The last round of Iran's talks with the so-called P5+1 -- the United States, Britain, China, France, Russia -- held June in Moscow ended with a stalemate, as did previous rounds.

The sides have failed to agree on a new stage of talks, blaming each other for uncertainty over a date and venue. The US side has said Iran was offered talks in Istanbul at the end of this month, but never confirmed.

"Iran, not for the first time, has been continually putting forward new conditions as a delaying tactic," Carney said.

"Negotiations about negotiations is a familiar tactic that only results in further isolation and more pressure on Iran."

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the ball is in Iran's court after the US proposed "another set of dates and another range of venues in February."

She said the US had been extremely "open and flexible" but that Washington had to ensure the talks were held in "a venue that's not politicised."

"I don't think we're going to Tehran, for example," she added. Tehran and Washington have not had diplomatic relations since the storming of the US embassy in the Iranian capital in 1979 and the subsequent hostage crisis.

- AFP/jc

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Taj heritage corridor scam: Setback for Mayawati as Supreme Court reopens case file

NEW DELHI: Nearly a decade after asking the CBI to register FIR against former UP CM Mayawati in the Taj heritage corridor scam, the Supreme Court on Monday sounded fresh warning bells by deciding to examine whether trial proceeding against her and others were closed in a legally correct manner.

A bench, comprising Justices H L Dattu and Ranjan Gogoi, decided to entertain four petitions challenging an Allahabad High Court judgment, which upheld the trial court's decision to close prosecution of Mayawati, her erstwhile cabinet colleague Naseemuddin Siddiqui and government officials, R K Sharma and Rajendra Prasad, on the ground that the governor had refused to grant sanction for their prosecution.

When the bench said, "We will examine the issue" and issued notices to respondents, Mayawati's counsel K K Venugopal argued that these petitions were not maintainable as the apex court had earlier rejected pleas challenging the governor's 2007 decision refusing to accord sanction to the CBI to prosecute her.

Issuing notices to Mayawati, Siddiqui, the CBI, the Centre and the UP government to file their responses to the petitions, Justices Dattu and Gogoi said, "We want to have a second look at the case." The four petitions were filed by Kamlesh Verma, Anupma Singh, Kashi Prasad Yadav and Mamta Singh.

Appearing for Verma, senior advocate Shanti Bhushan argued that the offences under Section 420 (cheating), 467, 468 and 471 (all related to forgery) of the Indian Penal Code and corrupt acts could never be said to have been done by these officials in their official capacity and hence sanction was not a requirement for the court to carry on with trial proceedings.

He said the HC did not adjudicate the law point "whether sanction at all was needed for proceeding with the trial". Instead, it "carved out a new case that sanction having been refused by the Competent Authority, the designated court did not have any jurisdiction to proceed with the matter, whereas, the order refusing sanction by the competent authority was not an issue at all."

In July 6, 2012, the apex court had quashed a disproportionate assets (DA) case, allegedly linked to the Taj heritage corridor scam, saying the court had never desired the CBI to register a FIR against her in the case. But three months later, it entertained a review petition.

The bench hearing the review petition on October 9 had issued notice to Mayawati and the CBI and said it was ready to consider issuing a clarification that its judgment would not hinder the probe being taken to its logical conclusion provided the CBI obtained proper sanction in accordance with the law.

The review petition in that case was also filed by Kamlesh Verma. His counsel had argued that while directing registration of FIR against then CM Mayawati and Siddiqui in 2003 in the Taj heritage corridor scam, the apex court had been receiving the CBI's probe status reports both on the scam as well as her alleged disproportionate assets.

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Soldier who lost 4 limbs has double-arm transplant

The first soldier to survive after losing all four limbs in the Iraq war has received a double-arm transplant.

Brendan Marrocco had the operation on Dec. 18 at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, his father said Monday. The 26-year-old Marrocco, who is from New York City, was injured by a roadside bomb in 2009.

He also received bone marrow from the same dead donor who supplied his new arms. That novel approach is aimed at helping his body accept the new limbs with minimal medication to prevent rejection.

The military is sponsoring operations like these to help wounded troops. About 300 have lost arms or hands in the wars.

"He was the first quad amputee to survive" from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there have been four others since then, said Brendan Marrocco's father, Alex Marrocco. "He was really excited to get new arms."

The Marroccos want to thank the donor's family for "making a selfless decision ... making a difference in Brendan's life," the father said.

Surgeons plan to discuss the transplant at a news conference with the patient on Tuesday.

The 13-hour operation was led by Dr. W.P. Andrew Lee, plastic surgery chief at Johns Hopkins, and is the seventh double-hand or double-arm transplant done in the United States. Lee led three of those earlier operations when he previously worked at the University of Pittsburgh, including the only above-elbow transplant that had been done at the time, in 2010.

Marrocco's "was the most complicated one" so far, Lee said in an interview Monday. It will take more than a year to know how fully Marrocco will be able to use the new arms, Lee said.

"The maximum speed is an inch a month for nerve regeneration," he explained. "We're easily looking at a couple years" until the full extent of recovery is known.

While at Pittsburgh, Lee pioneered the novel immune suppression approach used for Marrocco. The surgeon led hand transplant operations on five patients, giving them marrow from their donors in addition to the new limbs. All five recipients have done well and four have been able to take just one anti-rejection drug instead of combination treatments most transplant patients receive.

Minimizing anti-rejection drugs is important because they have side effects and raise the risk of cancer over the long term. Those risks have limited the willingness of surgeons and patients to do more hand, arm and even face transplants. Unlike a life-saving heart or liver transplant, limb transplants are aimed at improving quality of life, not extending it.

Quality of life is a key concern for people missing arms and hands — prosthetics for those limbs are not as advanced as those for feet and legs.

Lee has received funding for his work from AFIRM, the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine, a cooperative research network of top hospitals and universities around the country that the government formed about five years ago. With government money, he and several other plastic surgeons around the country are preparing to do more face transplants, possibly using the new minimal immune suppression approach.

Marrocco expects to spend three to four months at Hopkins, then return to a military hospital to continue physical therapy, his father said. Before the operation, he had been living with his older brother in a handicapped-accessible home on New York's Staten Island built with the help of several charities.

The home was heavily damaged by Superstorm Sandy last fall.

Despite being in a lot of pain for some time after the operation, Marrocco showed a sense of humor, his father said. He had a hoarse voice from a tube in his throat during the long surgery, decided that he sounded like Al Pacino, and started doing movie lines.

"He was making the nurses laugh," Alex Marrocco said.

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AP writer Alex Dominguez contributed to this report.

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Brazil Nightclub Fire: 232 Dead, Hundreds Injured

Flames raced through a crowded nightclub in southern Brazil early Sunday, killing more than 230 people as panicked partygoers gasped for breath in the smoke-filled air, stampeding toward a single exit partially blocked by those already dead. It appeared to be the world's deadliest nightclub fire in more than a decade.

Witnesses said a flare or firework lit by band members may have started the blaze.

Television images showed smoke pouring out of the Kiss nightclub as shirtless young men who had attended a university party joined firefighters using axes and sledgehammers to pound at windows and walls to free those trapped inside.

Guido Pedroso Melo, commander of the city's fire department, told the O Globo newspaper that firefighters had a hard time getting inside the club because "there was a barrier of bodies blocking the entrance."

Teenagers sprinted from the scene desperately seeking 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.

The fire spread so fast inside the packed club that firefighters and ambulances could do little to stop it, Silva said.

Another survivor, Michele Pereira, told the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper that she was near the stage when members of the band lit flares that started the conflagration.

Germano Roratto/AFP/Getty Images

"The band that was onstage began to use flares and, suddenly, they stopped the show and pointed them upward," she said. "At that point, the ceiling caught fire. It was really weak, but in a matter of seconds it spread."

Guitarist Rodrigo Martins told Radio Gaucha that the band, Gurizada Fandangueira, started playing at 2:15 a.m. "and we had played around five songs when I looked up and noticed the roof was burning"

"It might have happened because of the Sputnik, the machine we use to create a luminous effect with sparks. It's harmless, we never had any trouble with it.

"When the fire started, a guard passed us a fire extinguisher, the singer tried to use it but it wasn't working"

He confirmed that accordion player Danilo Jacques, 28, died, while the five other members made it out safely.

Police Maj. Cleberson Braida Bastianello said by telephone that the toll had risen to 233 with the death of a hospitalized victim. Officials counted 232 bodies that had been brought for identification to a gymnasium in Santa Maria, a major university city with about 250,000 residents at the southern tip of Brazil, near the borders with Argentina and Uruguay.

An earlier count put the number of dead at 245.

Federal Health Minister Alexandre Padhilha told a news conference that most of the 117 people treated in hospitals had been poisoned by gases they breathed during the fire. Only a few suffered serious burns, he said.

Brazil President Dilma Roussef arrived to visit the injured after cutting short her trip to a Latin American-European summit in Chile.

"It is a tragedy for all of us," Roussef said.

Most of the dead apparently suffocated, according to Dr. Paulo Afonso Beltrame, a professor at the medical school of the Federal University of Santa Maria who went to the city's Caridade Hospital to help victims.

Beltrame said he was told the club had been filled far beyond its capacity during a party for students at the university's agronomy department.

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Nightclub fire kills at least 232 in Brazil

SANTA MARIA, Brazil (Reuters) - A nightclub fire killed at least 232 people in southern Brazil early on Sunday when a band's pyrotechnics show set the building ablaze and fleeing partygoers stampeded toward blocked and overcrowded exits in the ensuing panic, officials said.

The blaze in the university town of Santa Maria was started by a band member or someone from its production team igniting a flare, which then set fire to the ceiling, said Luiza Sousa, a civil police official. The fire spread "in seconds," she said.

Local fire officials said at least one exit was locked and that bouncers, who at first thought those fleeing were trying to skip out on bar tabs, initially blocked patrons from leaving. The security staff relented only when they saw flames engulfing the ceiling.

The tragedy, in a packed venue in one of Brazil's most prosperous states, comes as the country scrambles to improve safety, security and logistical shortfalls ahead of the 2014 World Cup soccer tournament and the 2016 Olympics, both intended to showcase the economic advances and first-world ambitions of Latin America's largest nation.

In Santa Maria, a city of more than 275,000 people, rescue workers and weary officials wept alongside family and friends of the victims at a local gymnasium being used as a makeshift morgue.

"It's the saddest, saddest day of my life," said Neusa Soares, the mother of one of those killed, 22-year-old Viviane Tolio Soares. "I never thought I would have to live to see my girl go away."

President Dilma Rousseff cut short an official visit to Chile and flew to Santa Maria, where she wept as she spoke to relatives of the victims at the gym.

"All I can say at the moment is that my feelings are of deep sorrow," said Rousseff, who began her political career in Rio Grande do Sul, the state where the fire occurred.

News of the fire broke on Sunday morning, when local news broadcast images of shocked people outside the Boate Kiss, as the nightclub was known. Gradually, grisly details emerged.

The vast majority of the victims, most of them university students, died of smoke inhalation, officials said. Others were crushed in the stampede.

"We ran into a barrier of the dead at the exit," Colonel Guido Pedroso de Melo, commander of the fire brigade in Rio Grande do Sul, said of the scene that firefighters found on arrival. "We had to clear a path to get to the rest of those that were inside."

Officials said more than 1,000 people may have been in the club, possibly exceeding its legal capacity. Though Internet postings about the venue suggested as many as 2,000 people at times have crammed into the club, Pedroso de Melo said no more than half that should have been inside.

He said the club was authorized to be open but its permit was in the process of being renewed.

However, Pedroso de Melo did point to several egregious safety violations - from the flare that went off during the show to the locked door that kept people from leaving.

'HAPPENED SO FAST'

When the fire began at about 2:30 a.m., many revelers were unable to find their way out amid the chaos, confusing restroom doors for exits and finding resistance from bouncers when they did find an exit.

"It all happened so fast," survivor Taynne Vendrusculo told GloboNews TV. "Both the panic and the fire spread rapidly, in seconds."

Once security guards realized the building was on fire, they tried in vain to control the blaze with a fire extinguisher, according to a televised interview with one of the guards, Rodrigo Moura. He said patrons were getting trampled as they rushed for the doors, describing it as "a horror film."

One of the club's owners has surrendered to police for questioning, GloboNews reported.

TV footage showed people sobbing outside the club before dawn, while shirtless firefighters used sledge hammers and axes to knock down an exterior wall to open up an exit.

Rescue officials moved the bodies to the local gym and separated them by gender. Male victims were easier to identify because most had identification on them, unlike the women, whose purses were left scattered in the devastated nightclub.

The disaster recalls other incidents including a 2003 fire at a nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode Island, that killed 100 people, and a Buenos Aires nightclub blaze in 2004 that killed nearly 200. In both incidents, a band or members of the audience ignited fires that set the establishment ablaze.

The Rhode Island fire shocked local and federal officials because of the rarity of such incidents in the United States, where enforcement of safety codes is considered to be relatively strict. After the Buenos Aires blaze, Argentine officials closed many nightclubs and other venues and ultimately forced the city's mayor from office because of poor oversight of municipal codes.

The fire early on Sunday occurred in one of the wealthiest, most industrious and culturally distinct regions of Brazil. Santa Maria is about 186 miles west of Porto Alegre, the capital of a state settled by Germans and other immigrants from northern Europe.

Local clichés paint the region as stricter and more squared away than the rest of Brazil, where most residents are a mix descended from native tribes, Portuguese colonists, African slaves, and later influxes of immigrants from southern Europe.

Rio Grande do Sul state's health secretary, Ciro Simoni, said emergency medical supplies from all over the state were being sent to the scene. States from all over Brazil offered support, and sympathy messages poured in from foreign leaders.

(Additional reporting by Guillermo Parra-Bernal, Gustavo Bonato, Jeferson Ribeiro, Eduardo Simões, Brian Winter and Guido Nejamkis.; Writing by Paulo Prada; Editing by Todd Benson, Kieran Murray and Eric Beech)

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