Swiss police identify all 116 people injured in deadly New Year’s bar fire
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CRANS-MONTANA, Switzerland (AP) — Swiss police said Monday they’ve identified all the people who were injured in the 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 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 citizens, 21 French nationals, 10 Italians, four Serbs, two Poles and one person each from Australia, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Czech Republic, Luxembourg, Portugal and the Republic of Congo, according to a police statement. There were also four dual nationals: 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 didn’t 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 1:30 a.m. 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.
Investigators have said they believe festive sparkling candles atop Champagne bottles ignited the fire when they came too close to the ceiling.
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.