ANKARA: Turkiye has detained 11 people as part of an investigation into a fire that killed 76 people and injured dozens at a ski resort in the Bolu mountains, Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said on Wednesday.
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 Türkiye.
“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.
The fire occurred at the Grand Kartal Hotel in the Kartalkaya ski resort, a 12-story hotel which had 238 registered guests. It was consumed by flames after the blaze started on the restaurant floor around 3:30 a.m. (0030 GMT).
Some survivors said they heard no fire alarms during the incident and guests said they had to navigate smoke-filled corridors in complete darkness.
The hotel pledged full cooperation with the investigation and said it was “deeply saddened by the losses.”
At one funeral in Ankara, the coffins of a family were lined up at the central Ahmet Hamdi Akseki mosque.
The parents, a doctor and teacher, had gone to Kartalkaya with their three children to ski during a school break, according to a Reuters witness at the funeral.
At least 20 of the fire victims were children, according to local media reports.
Erdogan declared Wednesday a day of national mourning following the tragedy, which occurred during the peak of the winter tourism season, with many families from Istanbul and Ankara traveling to the Bolu mountains to ski.
Turkiye detains 11 over ski resort hotel fire that killed 76
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Turkiye detains 11 over ski resort hotel fire that killed 76
- 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
- Several funerals were held on Wednesday for the victims of Tuesday’s blaze, including numerous children
Israeli president tells Bild: War with Iran needs ‘end result’, not exact timetable
- Herzog said the US and Israeli attacks on Iran were changing the whole configuration of the Middle East
- He defended strikes on Iranian oil sites as a way of taking away money from Tehran’s “war machine“
JERUSALEM: Israel’s President Isaac Herzog on Tuesday did not offer a timetable on when the war with Iran could end, telling Germany’s Bild newspaper: “We need to take a deep breath and get to the end result.”
Herzog said the US and Israeli attacks on Iran were changing the whole configuration of the Middle East. He defended strikes on Iranian oil sites as a way of taking away money from Tehran’s “war machine.”
The interview was published as the US and Israel pounded Iran with what the Pentagon and Iranians on the ground said were the most intense airstrikes of the war, despite global markets betting that President Donald Trump will seek to end the conflict soon.
Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Saar, had earlier said his country was not planning for an endless war and was consulting with Washington about when to stop it.
“The Iranians are the ones spreading chaos and terror throughout the region and the world. So I think if we measure everything by a speedometer, we won’t get anywhere. We need to take a deep breath and get to the end result,” Herzog told Bild.
Eliminating the Iranian threat would “enable the entire system in the region to suddenly breathe again and develop further. That’s fantastic,” he added.
