Dozens of people were killed and around 100 injured, most of them seriously, after fire tore through a crowded bar during a New Year\u2019s Eve party in the upscale Swiss ski resort of Crans-Montana, officials said on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Fire broke out at 1.30am in a bar called \u201cLe Constellation\u201d in the resort in southwestern Switzerland, which locals said was popular with teenagers. The cause of the blaze, which was initially reported as an explosion, remains unclear but authorities said it appeared to be an accident rather than an attack.<\/p>\n
Swiss police said \u201ctens\u201d of people were presumed dead, with around 100 injured, and the Italian foreign ministry said information from Swiss police indicated about 40 deaths. Swiss officials declined to give a specific figure.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were people screaming, and then people lying on the ground, probably dead,\u201d said 21-year-old local Samuel Rapp, who saw the aftermath of the fire. \u201cThey had jackets over their faces, thats what I saw, nothing more.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ceiling caught fire
\nVideo footage showed lines of ambulances queuing and helicopters landing to take victims to nearby hospitals and specialist burns units in other Swiss cities.<\/p>\n
Two young French women who said they were in the bar told France\u2019s BFM TV that they saw the fire start in the basement section of the club after a bottle containing \u201cbirthday candles\u201d was held up too close to the wooden ceiling.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fire spread across the ceiling super quickly,\u201d one of the two women, who identified themselves as Emma and Albane, told BFM TV. The pair said they were able to climb a narrow staircase to the ground floor and escape the building. Minutes later, the fire had reached the ground floor too, they said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dozens of people were killed and around 100 injured, most of them seriously, after fire tore through a crowded bar during a New Year\u2019s Eve party in the upscale Swiss ski resort of Crans-Montana, officials said on Thursday. Fire broke out at 1.30am in a bar called \u201cLe Constellation\u201d in the resort in southwestern Switzerland, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14814,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14813"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14815,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14813\/revisions\/14815"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}