ZURICH, Jan 4 (Reuters) – Teenagers as young as 14 and 15 years old were among those who died in the bar fire on New Year’s Eve that killed 40 people in Switzerland, police said on Sunday.
Police in Valais said they had identified 16 more of those who died in the blaze in Crans-Montana, one of the worst disasters in recent Swiss history.
Those newly identified included 10 Swiss nationals, two Italians, one person with Italian-Emirati citizenship, one Romanian, one person from France and one from Turkey, Valais police said. No names were given.
The youngest person identified so far is a 14-year-old Swiss woman, while two 15-year-old Swiss women were also among the dead.
Ten of the other bodies identified on Sunday were teenagers aged 16 to 18, police said. Also identified among the dead were two Swiss men aged 20 and 31, and a French national aged 39.
In total, police have now identified 24 of those who died in the blaze in the mountain resort, in southern Switzerland.
Late on Saturday police said two Swiss women aged 24 and 22 along with two Swiss men aged 21 and 18 had been identified.
Officials are still trying to identify others killed in the fire at the Le Constellation bar.
Some 119 people suffered injuries, including severe burns, with many transferred to burn units in hospitals around Europe. Work on identifying the dead and the injured are continuing, the police said.
Two people who ran the bar are under criminal investigation on suspicion of offences including homicide by negligence, prosecutors said on Saturday.
(Reporting by John Revill; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
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