Eyewitnesses said sparks from fireworks set fire to wicker coverings on the walls and ceiling of the packed club on Friday, and that a stampede broke out as more than 200 guests rushed towards a single narrow exit.
An initial investigation found the club was not equipped with automatic fire extinguishers and that fireworks should not have been used there, Marina Zabbarova, head of the Russian Prosecutor General's Investigative Committee for Perm region, said.
'When will this complacency end?' Zabbarova asked at a news conference in Perm, an industrial city 1,150 km (720 miles) northeast of Moscow. 'It was impossible to save anyone there.'
Four people have been arrested, including the nightclub's management and the director of the company that supplied the fireworks, Zabbarova said.
Roughly three dozen locals stood in the snow outside the morgue on Sunday, while a small crowd laid red carnations and lit candles in front of the gutted Lame Horse nightclub.
'The authorities are directly to blame, along with corruption and the criminality of the firemen,' 51-year old Leonid Ryabov said while buying flowers near the club. 'They have been carrying out inspections for eight years...'
In addition to the dead, roughly 130 people are suffering from smoke inhalation and extensive burns. About 80 of the victims have been flown to hospitals in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Chelyabinsk.
'It was monstrous, young people died there, the future of Russia,' said Sergei Prokofiev, an 18 year-old student and a stepbrother of one of the victims.
An all-day memorial service was also under way at the Holy Trinity cathedral in Perm.
Flags were flying at half mast in the city, and President Dmitry Medvedev has declared Monday a national day of morning.
Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for the Russian Prosecutor General's Investigative Committee told the Itar-Tass news agency that prosecutors planned to charge the four suspects with causing reckless death by violating fire safety standards.
'This is not a premeditated murder, but this does not lessen the gravity of the crime,' Medvedev said on Saturday.
The Prosecutor General's office also said that the fireworks used at the nightclub were not authorised for indoor use.
Friday's fire was Russia's deadliest in decades, emergency officials said, and the worst nightclub fire worldwide since nearly 200 people died at a party in Buenos Aires in 2004.
Russian officials have in the past blamed poor fire safety standards for high death tolls in fires at orphanages, hospitals other institutions. More than 15,000 Russians died in fires last year, according to government figures.
Relatives carry out the coffin of a victim of a night club fire from a morgue in Perm
A relative of a victim of a fire cries outside the Lame Horse nightclub where the fire took place in the centre of Perm
A photo of a nightclub fire victim attached to flowers seen at the site of the tragedy
In this combination of images from amateur video, customers, some still carrying their drinks, press towards the exit, as fire and smoke start to fill a packed nightclub
Nightclub tragedy: An orthodox priest reads lists of the injured during the night club fire, plastered on a wall at a hospital in Perm
City in mourning: People light candles in front of the Lame Horse nightclub where a fire took place on Friday in the centre of Perm
Stretcher-bearers carry a body near a morgue in Perm
Grieving relatives of Timur Parfiliev, a victim of a nightclub fire seen at a cemetery in Perm, about 700 miles east of Moscow
The death toll from a blaze that swept through a Russian nightclub early on Saturday rose to 112 and dozens remained in critical care
Police officers and investigators work at the Lame Horse nightclub where a fire broke out late Friday and into the early hours of Saturday
The blaze, in the early hours of Saturday, was thought to be sparked by fireworks that shot into the decorative twig ceiling of the Lame Horse nightclub during a pyrotechnics show. Nearly 100 were killed on the spot, and some 130 were hospitalized, many in critical condition.
Many victims were trapped in a panicked crush for the exit as they attempted to escape the flames and thick black smoke.
Emergency Ministry spokeswoman Darya Kochneva said Sunday the latest victim was a man who died of severe burns in a Moscow hospital where he was flown for treatment after the fire.
Mourning residents are indignant over what they call negligence on the part of the club's management, which President Dmitry Medvedev also criticized in a nationally televised videoconference on Saturday.
Officials said club managers had ignored repeated demands from authorities to change the interior to comply with fire safety standards. Authorities quickly arrested two registered co-owners of the club, its managing director and two other suspects. One other suspect was injured in the fire and remains in critical condition.
Medvedev demanded that lawmakers draft changes to toughen the criminal punishment for failing to comply with fire safety standards.
Enforcement of fire safety standards is infamously poor in Russia and there have been several catastrophic blazes at drug-treatment facilities, nursing homes, apartment buildings and nightclubs in recent years. The nation records up to 18,000 fire deaths a year, several times the per-capita rate in the United States and other Western countries.
Monday has been designated a national day of mourning, with entertainment events and television programs cancelled.
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