At least 66 people, including children have died and 51 others injured after fire razed a 12-story hotel at a ski resort in Turkey on Tuesday, authorities in the country said.
According to the New York Times, the fire broke out before dawn in the Grand Kartal Hotel in Kartalkaya located at a ski resort, during the Turkey holiday season, when schools were closed as children joined their parents on vacations.
It is estimated that around 230 guests were inside the hotel when the fire started, which ended up killing 66 people and injured dozens— the cause of the fire is still unclear.
“The smoke was so intense that we could hardly breathe,” Eylem Senturk, who was vacationing at the hotel with her family, told the state-run Anadolu news agency.
Meanwhile, four people, including the hotel’s owner, have been detained in connection with the incident. Turkish Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc also said that six prosecutors had been assigned to the case.
Mr Tunc posted on X, “The judicial investigation launched by the Bolu Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office regarding the hotel fire in Bolu Kartalkaya, where 66 of our citizens lost their lives, is being carried out meticulously and from multiple perspectives. Within the scope of the investigation to which our six public prosecutors were assigned, four people, including the business owner, were detained.”
