PERM, Russia - Russians mourned on Sunday for 112 revelers killed in a nightclub blaze, expressing anger at breaches of fire safety rules that prosecutors have blamed for Russia's most deadly fire in decades.

Sparks from a firework show set fire to wicker coverings on the walls and ceiling of the packed Lame Horse nightclub in Perm on Friday, provoking a stampede as more than 200 partygoers rushed toward a single narrow exit.

The club's owner, two managers and the man who organized the firework show were remanded in custody on Sunday by a Perm court on suspicion of manslaughter and breaching fire regulations.

President Dmitry Medvedev demanded they be punished with the full force of the law, but the blaze has sparked anger over the failure by the authorities to enforce fire safety regulations.

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 in Perm -- a city 1,150 km (720 miles) east of Moscow.

Ryabov, along with others who braved temperatures of minus 20 degrees Celsius to lay hundreds of bunches of red carnations outside the club, said corruption had allowed the club to ignore basic fire rules for years.

More than 15,000 people die each year in fires across Russia and senior officials admit that fire inspections are routinely used as a way to demand bribes from establishments rather than enforce safety rules.

In addition to the dead, another 123 people are still in a serious condition at hospitals in Moscow, St Petersburg and other cities after being airlifted to major burns units.

Doctors said many of the injured have more than 50 percent burns and some are being kept alive by artificial respirators.

FIRE RULES

Russian officials said the club's managers had been fined at least twice over breaching fire regulations and called for tougher inspections to prevent a repeat of Friday's disaster.

When will this complacency end? Marina Zabbarova, the head of the Russian Prosecutor General's main investigative unit, told reporters in Perm.

The nightclub was not equipped with automatic fire extinguishers and fireworks should not have been used there, she said, adding that the club's owner had tried to flee after the fire.

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.

About three dozen people stood in the snow outside the mortuary on Sunday while Perm started the grim task of burying its dead, most of whom were in their 20s and 30s.

My son died -- he was 27 and leaves behind a wife and a one-and-a-half year-old son, said the mother of Roman Telyegin. His son is searching for his papa.

At the funeral of 26-year-old Timur Perfilyev, a friend, Yelena, related how he had managed to get out of the club but returned to help others and perished.

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.

Flags flew at half mast in the city and Medvedev has declared Monday a national day of mourning. Fire inspectors carried out raids at other clubs in Perm to ensure they were complying with safety rules.

(Additional reporting by Dmitry Madorsky and Alfred Keuppers)

(Writing by Guy Faulconbridge, editing by Richard Williams)

Russia Dmitry Medvedev