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Families face agonising wait as investigators work to identify at least 40 people killed, many others wounded in blaze.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Initial investigations suggest that sparklers attached to champagne bottles may have ignited the devastating fire that ripped through a Swiss ski resort bar on New Year\u2019s Eve, killing more than three dozen people, the local prosecutor says.<\/p>\n \u201cEverything suggests that the fire started from the burning candles or \u2018Bengal lights\u2019 that had been attached to champagne bottles,\u201d prosecutor Beatrice Pilloud said during a news conference on Friday.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n \u201cThese went too close to the ceiling. From there, a rapid, very rapid and widespread conflagration ensued,\u201d Pilloud told reporters.<\/p>\n At least 40 people were killed and 119 others wounded in the blaze that broke out at the crowded Le Constellation bar in the Swiss Alps town of Crans-Montana in the early hours of Thursday.<\/p>\n The deadly fire has prompted an outpouring of grief among residents, tourists and survivors, many of whom are still seeking information about missing friends and loved ones.<\/p>\n Reporting from Crans-Montana on Friday afternoon, Al Jazeera\u2019s Jonah Hull said people have been bringing flowers and lighting candles at a memorial to the victims.<\/p>\n \u201c[There is] real sadness on the face of so many people,\u201d said Hull, describing the town as a \u201cplace of collective grief and mourning\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cJust down the road over there, you can see white, plastic sheeting surrounding Le Constellation bar \u2026 obscuring the work of forensic investigators going about the painstaking task of identifying around 40 bodies,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n As families faced an agonising wait for information, Swiss officials said on Friday that 113 of 119 people injured in the fire had been identified.<\/p>\n They included 14 French nationals, 11 Italians and four Serbian nationals, said Frederic Gisler, the police commander in the Valais region where Crans-Montana is located.<\/p>\n Authorities also said about 50 people had been sent or would be transferred to other European countries for treatment in specialised burn units.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, an Instagram account has filled up with photos of people who remain unaccounted for, with their friends and relatives begging for tips about the whereabouts of the missing.<\/p>\n \u201cThe atmosphere is heavy,\u201d Dejan Bajic, a 56-year-old tourist from Geneva who has been coming to the resort for decades, told the AFP news agency.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s like a small village; everyone knows someone who knows someone who\u2019s been affected.\u201d<\/p>\n Marco, a 20-year-old from the Italian city of Milan, told the Reuters news agency outside Le Constellation that 20 of his friends were missing.<\/p>\n \u201cSome of them are injured, in bad condition. Some of them are completely safe. And some of our friends, we don\u2019t have any news. They told us they never found them,\u201d he said. \u201cNobody can help us find our friends.\u201d<\/p>\n Authorities have warned that naming the victims or establishing a definitive death toll would take time because many of the bodies were badly burned.<\/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 said Mathias Reynard, head of government of the canton of Valais.<\/p>\n Experts were using dental and DNA samples to identify the victims, he added.<\/p>\n Pilloud, the prosecutor, also said on Friday that the owners of the bar have been questioned as part of the ongoing investigation into the cause of the fire.<\/p>\n The probe will focus on previous renovations to the bar and the materials used, the availability of adequate fire extinguishing systems and escape routes, as well as the number of people who were in the bar when the fire started.<\/p>\n Pilloud said further investigations would determine whether there were grounds for criminal liability.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Families face agonising wait as investigators work to identify at least 40 people killed, many others wounded in blaze. Initial investigations suggest that sparklers attached to champagne bottles may have ignited the devastating fire that ripped through a Swiss ski resort bar on New Year\u2019s Eve, killing more than three dozen people, the local prosecutor […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7301,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7300","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\/7300","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=7300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7300\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
\u2018Like a small village\u2019<\/h2>\n
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