Police identify all 116 people hurt in Swiss bar fire
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Swiss police say they have identified all the people who were injured in a deadly fire that tore through a New Year’s celebration in a crowded bar.
They put the total at 116, more than two-thirds still in hospitals.
Authorities had previously given a figure of 119 injured, on top of the 40 people killed.
But police said on Monday that three people admitted to hospitals on the night of the disaster in Crans-Montana had been linked in error to the blaze at the crowded Le Constellation bar.
The injured include 68 Swiss people, 21 French citizens, 10 Italians, four Serbs, two Poles and one person each from Australia, Belgium, Bosnia, the Czech Republic, Luxembourg, Portugal and the Republic of Congo, according to a police statement.
There were also four dual citizens: of France and Finland, France and Italy, Switzerland and Belgium, and Italy and the Philippines.
Police said 83 of the injured were still in hospitals.
They did not give further details or specify their ages.
The severity of burns made it difficult to identify some victims of the fire that broke out at about 1.30am on New Year’s Day, requiring families to supply authorities with DNA samples.
Authorities announced on Sunday evening that they had completed the identification of the 40 people who died, the youngest of them aged 14.
On Monday, Italian authorities flew home the bodies of five victims from the airport in Sion, the regional capital.
Officials stood quietly as Swiss police pallbearers carried the coffins through a line of firefighters and soldiers to an Italian Air Force C-130 cargo plane.
Mourners hugged before relatives boarded the aircraft.
Prosecutors said the fire that spread rapidly in the early hours of January 1 was likely caused by sparkling candles igniting the ceiling of the bar’s basement.
Swiss authorities have opened a criminal investigation into the bar managers.
The two are suspected of involuntary homicide, involuntary bodily harm and involuntarily causing a fire, according to the Valais region’s chief prosecutor.
On Sunday, police said circumstances did not currently merit them being put under arrest and they did not see a flight risk.
Crans-Montana will on Friday hold a ceremony honouring the victims.
The French government said that President Emmanuel Macron would attend.
with AP
Reuters
