Key points
- Justice ministry confirms toll
- Fire alarm system did not work: experts
- Hotel had only one fire escape
ISTANBUL: A fire at a ski resort in Turkey this week is now known to have killed 78 people, the justice ministry announced Thursday, saying all the victims had been identified.
According to AFP, the prosecutor’s office in Bolu, the capital of the province where the tragedy occurred, had given a figure of 79 deaths.
Entire families perished when the huge fire swept through the Grand Kartal Hotel in Kartalkaya resort in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
Suspicion and questions
Questions have multiplied about fire safety measures at the luxury 12-storey hotel amid growing suspicion that negligence contributed to the high death toll.
Survivors and experts have said the hotel’s fire alarm system did not work.
Derya Basyilmaz, head of the Ankara Chamber of Architects who was in Kartalkaya with a team of experts to prepare a report on the tragedy, told AFP the hotel had only one fire escape and no sprinkler system.
Eleven arrested
So far, 11 people have been arrested, among them the hotel’s owner, general manager, director and chief electrician, as well as the head of the Bolu fire department.
According to Reuters, a deputy mayor of the northwestern Bolu province, the head of the municipality’s fire department, the owner and the manager of the hotel were among those detained, Tunc said on X.
Several funerals were held on Wednesday for the victims of Tuesday’s blaze, including numerous children.
The fire forced panicked hotel guests to jump from windows in the middle of the night.
“Our hearts and souls are hurting,” President Tayyip Erdogan said at a funeral for eight victims from the same family in Bolu in western Turkey.
“I pray for patience for the entire family and our nation.”
The bodies of 45 victims were handed over to their families, and forensic DNA tests were being conducted to identify the others, the government said.
Interior Minister on Tuesday had announced that 76 people had been killed in the fire, but the Bolu prosecutor’s office updated the death toll to 79 on Wednesday evening following forensic DNA tests.