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Investigators are rushing to identify the victims and establish the cause of a devastating fire at a New Year\u2019s Eve party that ripped through a bar in the Swiss Alps town of Crans-Montana.<\/p>\n
Relatives and friends have been scrambling to find their loved ones, with many circulating photos on social media after the disaster that happened in the early hours of 2026, killing about 40 people and injuring about 115 others, many seriously.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n \u201cWe tried to reach them; some of their locations are still showing here,\u201d Valais, a teenager who was attending the party, told the AFP news agency, nodding at the bar now shielded by opaque white tarpaulins and behind a wall of temporary barriers.<\/p>\n \u201cWe took loads of photos [and] we put them on Instagram, Facebook, every social network possible to try to find them,\u201d Eleonore, another one, said.<\/p>\n \u201cBut there\u2019s nothing. No response. We called the parents. Nothing. Even the parents don\u2019t know,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n Officials have started the arduous process of identifying the victims, but with some of the bodies badly burned, police warned the process could take days or even weeks.<\/p>\n \u201cThe first objective is to assign names to all the bodies,\u201d Crans-Montana\u2019s mayor Nicolas Feraud told a news conference on Thursday evening. This, he said, could take days.<\/p>\n Mathias Reynard, head of government of the canton of Valais, said experts were using dental and DNA samples for the task.<\/p>\n \u201cAll this work needs to be done because the information is so terrible and sensitive that nothing can be told to the families unless we are 100 percent sure,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Bystanders described scenes of panic and chaos during the incident as people tried to break the windows to escape, and others, covered in burns, poured into the street.<\/p>\n The exact number of people who were at the bar when it went up in flames remains unclear, and police have not specified how many are still missing.<\/p>\n Le Constellation had a capacity of 300 people, plus another 40 people on its terrace, according to the Crans-Montana website. Crans-Montana is about 200km south of the Swiss capital, Bern.<\/p>\n More than 30 victims were taken to hospitals with specialised burns units in Zurich and Lausanne, and six were taken to Geneva, according to the Swiss media.<\/p>\n There is no official estimate of the missing or headcount from Le Constellation bar that night.<\/p>\n While Swiss officials have said about 40 people were killed, Italy has put the death toll at 47, based on information from Swiss authorities.<\/p>\n Italy and France are among the countries that have said some of their nationals are missing and Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani will visit Crans-Montana on Friday, Italy\u2019s ambassador to Switzerland Gian Lorenzo Cornado said.<\/p>\n All bar five of the 112 injured had been identified now, Cornado said. Six Italians are still missing and 13 hospitalised, he added. Three Italians were repatriated on Thursday and three more will follow on Friday, he said.<\/p>\n The French foreign ministry said nine French citizens figured among the injured, and eight others remained unaccounted for.<\/p>\n Swiss President Guy Parmelin, who took over on Thursday, called the fire \u201ca calamity of unprecedented, terrifying proportions\u201d, and announced that flags would be flown at half-staff for five days.<\/p>\n The fire broke out at about 1:30am (00:30 GMT) on Thursday at Le Constellation, a bar popular with young tourists.<\/p>\n \u201cWe thought it was just a small fire \u2013 but when we got there, it was war,\u201d Mathys, from neighbouring Chermignon-d\u2019en-Bas, told AFP. \u201cThat is the only word I can use to describe it: the apocalypse.\u201d<\/p>\n Authorities have declined to speculate on what caused the tragedy, saying only that it was not an attack.<\/p>\n The canton\u2019s chief prosecutor, Beatrice Pilloud, said investigators would look into whether the bar met safety standards and had the required number of exits.<\/p>\n Multiple sources told AFP that the bar owners are French nationals: a couple originally from Corsica who, according to a relative, are safe, but have been unreachable since the tragedy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Investigators are rushing to identify the victims and establish the cause of a devastating fire at a New Year\u2019s Eve party that ripped through a bar in the Swiss Alps town of Crans-Montana. Relatives and friends have been scrambling to find their loved ones, with many circulating photos on social media after the disaster that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7263,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
\u2018The apocalypse\u2019<\/h2>\n
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