Flags are flying at half mast in Russia on Monday as the country holds a day of mourning for the 112 people killed in a nightclub blaze in the industrial city of Perm.

Major television channels said they would suspend entertainment programming and advertising as memorial services were held across the country. Mourners placed flowers and candles outside the charred ruins of the club.

The show of grief came after arrests were made on Sunday, and with anger growing over poor the enforcement of safety regulations at the club in Perm, near the Ural Mountains.

Fireworks are believed to have started the inferno.

Authorities arrested the club's owner, executive director and artistic director, along with a businessman hired to install the pyrotechnics. They were remanded in custody on suspicion of manslaughter and breaking fire regulations.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has insisted that those responsible be harshly punished. Fire inspectors carried out checks at other clubs in the city to ensure they were following safety rules.

Kept alive by respirators

Besides those killed, 123 people are still in serious condition, some being kept alive by artificial respirators. Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu said he expected the death toll to rise because many had extensive burns.

Investigators revealed that the owners had already been fined twice for not enforcing regulations and called for tougher laws.

"When will this complacency end?" Marina Zabbarova, the head of the Russian prosecutor general's main investigative unit, said to reporters, adding that the club's owner had tried to flee.

Fireworks should not have been used at the club, she said, and the venue should have been fitted with automatic fire extinguishers.

Accusations of failure

The Russian press on Monday said authorities had failed in their responsibilities. In a commentary entitled "Worse than Terrorists," the daily newspaper Vedomosti blamed the fire on corruption and negligence by officials.

The Vremya Novostei newspaper called the failure to shut the club "scandalous."

"No official has ever begun to explain begun to explain why the club was not shut after all those violations," it said.

Hundreds of bunches of red carnations were laid outside the club by mourners on Sunday.

"The authorities are directly to blame, along with corruption and the criminality of the firemen," said 51-year-old Leonid Ryabov, one of those paying tribute.

Sparks coming from onstage fireworks set fire to wicker wall coverings and a decorative twig ceiling at the packed Lame Horse Nightclub. There was a stampede as more than 200 partygoers rushed towards a single narrow exit.

Deadliest in decades

The fire was Russia's deadliest in decades, officials said, and is the worst nightclub fire in the world since 200 people died in Buenos Aires in 2004.

At the funeral of 26-year-old Timur Perfilyev, a friend, Yelena, said he had escaped from the club but returned to help others and perished.

"It was monstrous, young people died there, the future of Russia," said Sergei Prokofiev, a stepbrother of one of the victims.

Parliament speaker Boris Gryzlov said he planned to put a law to the national legislature, the Duma, tightening safety regulations for such venues.

rc/AP/AFP/Reuters/dpa

Editor: Kyle James