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Several dozen people are presumed dead and around 100 injured after a fire ravaged a bar at a ski resort in southern Switzerland, officials said.
The fire broke out around 1:30 a.m. (0030 GMT) during New Year’s celebrations at a bar called Le Constellation in Crans-Montana, police said.
People from several countries have been affected, according to Swiss authorities, and “significant work” will be necessary to identify victims and return the bodies to families.
Authorities investigating the incident have not mentioned a cause, but have categorically ruled out an attack.
Ten helicopters, 40 ambulances and 150 rescuers were sent overnight to the scene of the fire in the Valais region, popular with tourists.
Most of the injured suffered serious burns and were transferred to Valais hospital, said Mathias Reynard, president of the regional council, during a press conference Thursday morning.
Its intensive care unit has reached full capacity and Reynard said the local community needs to take extra precautions to avoid needing unnecessary hospital treatment.
Some people were transported to hospitals in Lausanne and Zurich which have specialized burn units.
A spokesperson for Lausanne University Hospital said they were treating 22 patients with burns, while Zurich University Hospital said they were treating 12 patients for burns.
Details are still emerging, and we do not yet know the precise number of people killed or injured, their nationality, the cause of the fire or the number of people who were in the bar. However, authorities confirmed that several nationalities were involved.
The Italian Foreign Ministry said Swiss police reports said around 40 people had died.
At the news conference, police said “several dozen” were presumed dead, but did not give a more precise number when responding to media questions.
EPA/ShutterstockOn Thursday, local media suggested that pyrotechnics may have caused the incident, although this has not been confirmed.
The public prosecutor of the canton of Valais, Béatrice Pilloud, indicated that an investigation was underway “in order to identify the circumstances which caused this dramatic situation”.
She said at the press conference “at the moment we are promoting a fire and at no time is there any question of any attack”, adding out of respect for the families that she cannot say more at the moment.
Police initially referred to it as an explosion, but later changed their definition to that of a fire, adding that it was too early to speculate on the cause.
Asked about the cause during the press conference, the regional security manager, Stéphane Ganzer, declared that “it is not the detonation of an explosive device which causes the fire, it is the fire which, as it develops, causes an explosion and a general fire of the premises”.
Work is underway to identify the victims and return the bodies to the families as quickly as possible, Ms Pilloud said, adding: “To achieve this, there is important work to be done. And this important work will require the closure of the neighborhood.”
Italy’s ambassador to Switzerland, Gian Lorenzo Cornado, said it would take weeks to identify the dead.
A helpline has been set up for families: +41 848 112 117
“A moment of joy turned into a tragedy that affected all of Switzerland and abroad,” declared President Guy Parmelin.
Crans-Montana is a luxury ski resort, famous in the 1980s for hosting the Ski World Cup.
The Constellation, which has been around for decades, has an upstairs equipped with TV screens where people go to watch football games, and a large bar downstairs for drinking and dancing.
The British Foreign Office said its “thoughts are with all those injured and killed in this terrible tragedy” and that consular staff were ready to provide support to all affected British nationals.
