The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and Singapore embassy in Bangkok have been in close contact with their next-of-kin, according to an MFA statement on Friday.

The embassy in Bangkok is working closely with the local authorities to determine their status; and also if there are any other Singaporeans affected, the statement said.

On Thursday, MFA also confirmed that a Singaporean male was amongst up to 60 people killed in the fire which swept through the packed nightclub shortly after hundreds of revellers ushered in the new year.

Mr Teo Sze Siong, 38, an air traffic controller, was one of those who died in the inferno that gutted the upscale Santika club. Victims died from burns, smoke inhalation and injuries suffered during a stampede from the club, police said.

Two other Singaporeans, 21-year-old national serviceman Melvin Lee and a woman, Ms Adeline Tok Chai Lin, were among over 200 people injured in the blaze, according to information obtained from Bangkok police. About 30 of the injured were foreigners.

Mourners laid flowers outside Bangkok's Santika nightclub on Friday as authorities raised to 59 the death toll from the blaze that ripped through the venue as revellers rang in the New Year.

More than 200 people were also injured early on Thursday at the nightclub in the Thai capital's lively Ekkamai district, in a grim start to 2009.

'The updated death toll is 59. Of the injured, 86 remain in hospital with 38 in intensive care units,' Mr Chatree Charoencheewakul, secretary of the emergency services headquarters, said.

Police began piecing together how so many revellers could have died, but say it may take up to two weeks to determine what caused the fire.

Witnesses and some officials have said a likely cause was a pyrotechnics display on stage soon after patrons rang in the New Year at midnight.

'The deputy national police chief chaired a meeting today and laid out guidelines for police to investigate how the fire broke out,' case officer Lieutenant Colonel Prawit Kangwol said.

'The assumptions are a short circuit or small fireworks that triggered the fire inside the club.'

Many of the trapped party-goers died of smoke inhalation, while others were crushed to death in the stampede to get out of the front exit. There was a back exit as well, but that was known only to staff members.

Local press on Friday, carried harrowing witness accounts of people running, screaming and pushing one another though the darkness as flames rained down from the ceiling.

Questions are also being asked about safety standards in Bangkok's many nightspots, and police have vowed to investigate whether the tragedy could have been prevented.

The club, popular with Bangkok's elite, has a capacity of 1,000 people but it was not clear how many were in there at the time of the blaze. -- AFP

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