About 40 people are believed to have been killed and 100 injured after a fire tore through a crowded bar during a New Year’s Eve party in the Swiss ski resort of Crans-Montana, according to the Italian foreign ministry.
Swiss police confirmed “several dozen” partygoers were dead. The victims could not be immediately identified because of the severity of their burns, the ministry said.
It confirmed arson was not responsible, with the blaze thought to be the result of an accident.
“There has been an explosion of unknown origin,” Gaëtan Lathion, a police spokesperson in the canton of Valais in southwest Switzerland, told Agence France-Presse. “There are several injured and several dead.”
He said the fire started at about 1.30am local time in a bar called Le Constellation, which is popular with tourists, as revellers rang in the new year. “More than a hundred people were in the building and we are seeing many injured and many dead,” he said.
The Department of Foreign Affairs said it was aware of the incident and stood ready to provide consular assistance.
The Irish Embassy in Switzerland said it is “monitoring the situation” and for “any Irish citizen in need of consular assistance” to call the Embassy on +41 (0) 31 350 0380 or +353 (0) 1 408 2000.
Video from the scene shows orange flames billowing from inside the ground-floor bar and lounge. Screams can be heard as well as loud music. Several people were seen collapsed outside the building, which is in the centre of the Valais resort.
Two women told the French broadcaster BFMTV that they were inside Le Constellation when they saw a bartender carrying a woman member of staff on his shoulders. She was holding a lit candle in a champagne bottle that set fire to a wooden ceiling. The flames quickly spread and collapsed the ceiling, they said.
One of the women described a crowd surge as people frantically tried to escape from a basement nightclub up a narrow flight of stairs and through a narrow door.
It was not immediately possible to verify their account from other sources.
Another witness speaking to BFMTV described partygoers breaking windows to escape the fire, some gravely injured, and panicked parents rushing to the scene in cars to see whether their children were trapped inside.
The young man said he saw about 20 people scrambling to get out of the smoke and flames.
The morning after the tragedy, two women held each other and wept in front of the police cordon outside Le Constellation, while mourners left flowers. The club itself, which is frequented by younger people and tourists, was surrounded by police tents.
Shortly before 1pm a Swiss police forensics team entered the tents. Behind the building, an apartment block – also called Le Constellation – had smashed windows where firefighters had attempted to let the smoke from the blaze escape.
Rescuers and firefighters work at the site of a fire that ripped through a bar in Crans-Montana. Photograph: Maxime Schmid/AFP via Getty Images
Crans-Montana is a bustling resort town of about 10,000 people perched high in the Valais canton of the Swiss Alps, with a view across the valley to the famed Matterhorn mountain.
Unlike nearby Verbier, which attracts a wealthy anglophone crowd, Crans-Montana is popular mainly with wealthy Europeans.
But Le Constellation itself was more of a cheap and cheerful bar for younger people and tourists.
Ulysse Brozzo (16), an instructor at the ESS ski school, said several of his friends were in the club at the time.
He said he had spoken to some who were safe, but had yet to hear from others he knew were inside when the fire broke out. A friend of a friend was in a coma at Sion hospital. “It’s a total tragedy,” he said. “There were hundreds of people inside.”
The venue was set over two floors, he said, with a bar on the main floor and narrow stairs leading to a basement nightclub below.
Speaking at a press conference on Thursday morning, Mathias Reynard, the president of the Valais canton, said what should have been a moment of celebration “turned into a nightmare”.
The police commander Frédéric Gisler spoke of “several dozen fatalities”, adding that he was devastated by the tragedy. “I can’t hide from you that we are all shaken by what happened overnight in Crans,” he told a press conference.
“Our count is about 100 injured, most seriously, and unfortunately tens of people are presumed dead,” he said, adding that patients had been dispatched to hospitals in Sion, Lausanne, Geneva and Zurich.
“At the moment we are considering this a fire and we are not considering the possibility of an attack,” the prosecutor Beatrice Pilloud said, adding that authorities had opened a full investigation.
She said authorities were trying to get the bodies of the victims to their families. “A lot of resources have been put into forensics to identify the victims. These resources are intended to allow us to get the bodies to the families as soon as possible,” she said.
Some of the victims are from other countries, said Stéphane Ganzer, the head of security for the Valais canton.
Sion hospital said it had admitted several patients but did not specify a number, according to Le Temps. From the scene on Thursday morning, Romaine Morard, a journalist for the newspaper, described “a smell of burning still in the air”.
A reception centre and helpline have been set up for affected families, Mr Lathion said. “We’re just at the beginning of our investigation, but this is a internationally renowned ski resort with lots of tourists.”
French media said Le Constellation was a well-known spot in Crans-Montana. It opened in 2015 and could accommodate up to 300 people inside, with another 40 on a heated terrace.
The bar’s Facebook and Instagram pages appear to have been deleted and are unavailable. Its owners are reportedly a French couple, originally from Corsica.
The owner of the Dédé clothing store, directly across the street from Le Constellation said the venue was a popular destination for younger people.
Earlier, the area around the scene was closed off, and a no-fly zone was imposed over Crans-Montana, a resort town 40km (25 miles) north of the Matterhorn.
The town relies heavily on a largely European clientele who come to ski, eat in several Michelin-starred restaurants and shop at Moncler and Louis Vuitton stores. It has around 3,000 hotel rooms to its 10,000 residents. – Guardian; additional reporting: Agence France-Presse and Associated Press