Details have emerged of how more than 233 people who went to enjoy themselves at a Brazilian nightclub perished in an inferno yesterday.

Security guards have been accused of compounding the problem by trying to stop people leaving club after the fire broke out.

“The victims, believed to be mainly students from a nearby university, died from smoke inhalation and were crushed as panicked men and women tried to flee the building in the early hours of Sunday morning,” reports Britain’s Daily Telegraph. “There were claims security guards had tried to stop people leaving as they underestimated the severity of the fire.”

The band performing at the venue had lit a flare, police said, which set the soundproofing foam on the ceiling alight, spreading in seconds.

“Witnesses said there was a stampede of people trying to reach one exit of the Kiss nightclub in Santa Maria, a university city in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. Many of those who survived had been in the VIP section closest to the door,” Telegraph reports this morning.

Major Gerson da Rosa Ferreira, who was leading rescue efforts for the military police, said there were up to 500 people inside the club when the fire broke out at about 230am local time.

Santa Maria fire chief Guido de Melo said there had been widespread panic after the fire broke out. “The main cause of death was asphyxiation,” he said.

Local reports say the event at the venue with a capacity for 2,000 people was a £5 per person festival for students at the Federal University of Santa Maria.

Matheus Bortolotto, a dentist who survived the fire, said some of the victims had been trapped by crowd control barriers.

“The club’s barriers used to organise queues locked people in,” he told Correio do Povo. “One girl died in my arms, I felt her heart stop beating. It was like a movie scene.

“The ambulances could not cope with the number of casualties. We could not manage to use the emergency exits. Those at the bottom of the club had no chance.”

He said the flare had been set off by the band, Gurizada Fandangueira, during the first song but the crowd only reacted when they saw black smoke coming from the stage.

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

Murilo de Toledo Tiecher, a medical student, claimed security guards did not realise the gravity of the fire and initially tried to stop people leaving.

“People were screaming ‘there’s a fire’ but the security guards didn’t budge and tried to keep the door shut,” he told Zero Hora newspaper. “Five or six people knocked over one security guard and knocked down the door. It was the only exit. The first people to get out tried to pull out whoever was still inside. Hands and arms appeared from the curtain of smoke. I pulled out a girl by the hair. It was chaos.”

Luana Santos Silva, 23, told GloboNews that she was near the exit when the fire started. “We looked at the ceiling at the front of the stage and saw a fire was starting,” she said. “My sister grabbed me and dragged me across the floor. It was a small emergency door for so many people.”

Her sister Aline, 29, added: “The smoke spread very fast, it did not give people time to escape.

People started to get sick and soon people were leaving covered in soot.”

Some of the bodies of the victims were taken to a nearby municipal sports centre where families gathered to identify the dead. Authorities are reportedly struggling to identify some of the female victims, who became separated from their handbags in the club.

Brazilian press on Sunday night reported that most of the victims were aged between 16 and 20, despite the event being for over 18s, as many teenagers are thought to have attended with fake ID cards.

At least six hospitals received the injured while health workers appealed for blood donations and medical supplies. The city, which is 180 miles from the state capital Porto Alegre, has a population of around 250,000.

News of the death toll prompted President Dilma Rousseff to cut short her visit to Chile to return to Brazil.