Swiss police identify 16 more bodies after deadly bar fire on New Year’s Eve | Police news

According to the Valais police, among the people identified are 10 Swiss, two Italians, a person of Italian-Emirati nationality, a Romanian, a Frenchman and a Turk.

Swiss police say they have identified 16 more people who died in a fatal bar fire on New Year’s Eve that killed 40 people, at one of the country’s largest. deadliest disasters.

According to the Valais police on Sunday, among the people identified were 10 Swiss nationals, two Italians, a person of Italian-Emirati nationality, a Romanian, a Frenchman and a Turk.

So far, 24 people were identified among those who died in the fire at the Le Constellation bar in the mountain resort of Crans-Montana in southern Switzerland.

The wait for families to hear from their loved ones is agonizing.

Among the people identified, the youngest person killed was a 14-year-old Swiss girl, followed by two 15-year-old Swiss girls.

Police said 10 other bodies identified Sunday were teenagers aged 16 to 18. Two Swiss nationals, aged 20 and 31, and a French national, aged 39, were also identified.

Authorities are continuing efforts to identify other victims of the fire that injured around 119 people, some of whom suffered severe burns and were transferred to burn units across Europe.

For the local community, the consequences of this tragic fire are causing acute distress.

Damiano Vizioli, a 24-year-old from the nearby town of Sion, was at Constellation on New Year’s Eve, but had gone out to smoke a cigarette when the bar was suddenly engulfed in flames.

“I don’t sleep well because I hear people screaming,” Vizioli told the Reuters news agency. He returned to the bar, desperate to hear from a friend who worked there and who he hadn’t heard from since.

Eric Schmid, a 63-year-old local businessman, also told Reuters that the disaster would be felt “quite deeply, and I think it will take time to heal.”

“We [the Swiss] are mountain people. We will survive, of course, but that is not the most important thing,” he said.

“It’s more about the children and all those people who have been affected. But the messages and the signs of solidarity are extremely important,” he added.

Swiss prosecutors said on Saturday that two people who ran the bar were under criminal investigation on suspicion of offenses including homicide by negligence.