The governor of the Kemerovo region in Russia, Aman Tuleyev, announced his resignation from office on Sunday morning, following a fatal fire that broke out in a shopping mall in the same region last month, the BBC reported.

Tuleyev’s move was announced in a video posted on the regional administration’s website, where he described his resignation as “the right, conscious and only true decision.”

According to the BBC, Tuleyev’s niece was pronounced dead in the fire. Sixty more people died in the inferno, the majority of which were children.

Thousands of people protested the tragedy, in what they said was a safety fail on the mall’s behalf.

Reuters described the fire as the deadliest of its kind in more than twenty years.