A fire broke out in a hotel at a ski resort in northwestern Turkey on Tuesday, killing 10 people and injuring 32 others, the interior minister said.
Witnesses said desperate guests had tried to escape using ropes, footage showed bedsheets hanging from windows, and media reports suggested some died after trying to jump to safety. Was.
Several ministers rushed to the scene in the Kartalakaya resort, about 170 kilometers (100 miles) northwest of the capital Ankara, and officials said the fire was now under control.
Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya told Ax that the fire broke out at 3:27 a.m. (0027 GMT) in the 12-story Grand Kartal hotel, which has a wooden structure.
Local media reported that at least 230 people were staying at the hotel, which was at its busiest during the two-week school holidays.
The private NTV broadcaster said the dead included three people who jumped from hotel windows.
The fire is believed to have started in the restaurant and spread rapidly, although it was not immediately clear what caused it.
Part of it rests on the rock, making it difficult for firefighters to control the fire.
Television footage showed huge plumes of smoke rising into the sky along with snow-capped mountains behind the hotel.
“I heard screams around midnight, (hotel) residents screaming for help,” Baris Salgur, who works at a nearby hotel, told NTV television.
“They asked for blankets saying they would jump… We did what we could, we brought rope, pillows, we brought a sofa. As the flames came closer to them, some people threw themselves “
Officials fear that the death toll may increase.
‘No security’
The footage shows the hotel’s damaged lobby, shards of glass on the floor, the reception desk and the wooden furniture inside burnt black.
Officials warned that the building could collapse.
One man who managed to escape the flames told local media that no alarm was raised in the hotel when the fire broke out, complaining of the lack of any safety measures, including fire stairs or smoke detectors.
The footage showed hotel bedsheets hanging from the hotel’s windows, suggesting that some people had tied them down to escape the fire.
“I pray to God for mercy for our citizens who lost their lives in the fire,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Twitter.
He said he wished a speedy recovery to the injured affected by “this tragic accident”, adding that an investigation had been launched.
Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunç said that six prosecutors were allocated to investigate the blast.
The evacuated people were re-accommodated in nearby hotels.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
