CRANS-MONTANA, Switzerland (AP) — Investigators said Friday that they believe sparkling candles atop Champagne bottles ignited the fatal fire at a Swiss ski resort when they came too close to the ceiling of a bar crowded with New Year’s Eve revelers.

Authorities planned to look into whether the sound-dampening material on the ceiling conformed with regulations and whether sparklers were permitted for use in the bar.

The candles, which give off a stream of upward-shooting sparks, were the same type that is commonly available for parties, officials said.

Forty people were killed and another 119 injured in the blaze early Thursday as it ripped through the busy Le Constellation bar at the ski resort of Crans-Montana, authorities said. It was one of the worst tragedies in Switzerland’s history.

Many of the wounded were in their teens to mid-20s, police said.

Officials said they would also look at other safety measures on the premises, including fire extinguishers and escape routes.

Beatrice Pilloud, the attorney general for the Valais region, warned of possible prosecutions if any criminal liability is found.

The injured included 71 Swiss nationals, 14 French and 11 Italians, along with citizens of Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Luxembourg, Belgium, Portugal and Poland, according to Frédéric Gisler, police commander of the Valais region. The nationalities of 14 people were still unclear.

Among the crowd was Axel Clavier, a 16-year-old from Paris, who said he felt as if he was suffocating inside the Swiss Alpine bar where moments before he had been ringing in the new year with friends and dozens of other people.

The teenager escaped the inferno, which broke out early Thursday, by forcing a window open with a table. The dead included one of Clavier’s friends, and he told The Associated Press that two or three other friends remained missing hours after the disaster.

Late Thursday, mourners left candles and flowers at an impromptu memorial near the bar. Hundreds of others prayed for the victims at the nearby Church of Montana-Station.

Pope Leo sent a telegram Friday to the bishop of Sion, Switzerland, to express condolences and pray that “the Lord will welcome the deceased into His abode of peace and light, and will sustain the courage of those who suffer in their hearts or in their bodies.”

On Instagram, an account filled up with photos of people who were unaccounted for, with friends and relatives begging for tips about their whereabouts.

“We have numerous accounts of heroic actions, one could say, of very strong solidarity in the moment,” Valais regional government head Mathias Reynard told RTS radio Friday. He lauded the work of emergency officials on the day after the fire but added “in the first minutes it was citizens — and in large part young people — who saved lives with their courage.”

Clavier, the Parisian teenager, said he did not see the fire start, but did see waitresses arrive with Champagne bottles topped with burning sparklers.

Two women told French broadcaster BFMTV they were inside when they saw a male bartender lifting a female bartender on his shoulders as she held a lit candle in a bottle. The flames spread, collapsing the wooden ceiling, they told the broadcaster.

One of the women described a crowd surge as people frantically tried to escape from the basement nightclub up a flight of stairs and through a narrow door.

Another witness speaking to BFMTV described people smashing windows to escape the blaze, some gravely injured, and panicked parents rushing to the scene in cars to see whether their children were trapped inside.

Gianni Campolo, a Swiss 19-year-old who was in Crans-Montana on vacation, rushed to the bar to help first responders after receiving a call from a friend who escaped the inferno. He described a scene of people trapped on the ground, severely injured and burned.

“I have seen horror, and I don’t know what else would be worse than this,” Campolo told TF1.

The severity of the burns has made it difficult to identify bodies, requiring families to supply authorities with DNA samples. In some cases, wallets and any identification documents inside turned to ash in the flames.

Emanuele Galeppini, a promising 17-year-old Italian golfer who competed internationally, was officially listed as one of Italy’s missing nationals. His uncle Sebastiano Galeppini told Italian news agency ANSA that their family is awaiting the DNA checks, though the Italian Golf Federation on its website announced that he had died.

With high-altitude ski runs rising around 3,000 meters (nearly 9,850 feet) in the heart of the Valais region’s snowy peaks and pine forests, Crans-Montana is a major destination for international alpine skiing competitions. It’s also home to the European Masters each August.

Leicester reported from Sion, Switzerland. Dazio reported from Berlin. Associated Press journalists Geir Moulson in Berlin, Graham Dunbar in Geneva and Nicole Winfield and Giada Zampano in Rome contributed to this report.

CRANS-MONTANA, Switzerland (AP) — About 40 people were killed and another 115 injured, most of them seriously, after a fire ripped through a bar’s New Year celebration in a Swiss Alpine resort less than two hours after midnight Thursday, police said.

Authorities did not immediately have an exact count of the deceased.

The Crans-Montana resort is best known as an international ski and golf venue, and overnight, its crowded Le Constellation bar morphed from a scene of revelry into the site of potentially one of Switzerland’s worst tragedies.

Valais Canton police commander Frédéric Gisler said during a news conference that work is underway to identify the victims and inform their families, adding that the community is “devastated.”

Beatrice Pilloud, Valais Canton attorney general, said it was too early to determine the cause of the fire. Experts have not yet been able to go inside the wreckage.

“At no moment is there a question of any kind of attack,” Pilloud said.

Axel Clavier, a 16-year-old from Paris who survived the blaze, described “total chaos” inside the bar. One of his friends died and “two or three were missing,” he told The Associated Press.

He said he hadn’t seen the fire start, but did see waitresses arrive with Champagne bottles with sparklers, he said.

Clavier said he felt like he was suffocating and initially hid behind a table, then ran upstairs and tried to use a table to break a Plexiglas window. It fell out of its casing, allowing him to escape.

He lost his jacket, shoes, phone and bank card while fleeing, but “I am still alive and it’s just stuff.”

“I’m still in shock,” he added.

Two women told French broadcaster BFMTV they were inside when they saw a male bartender lifting a female bartender on his shoulders as she held a lit candle in a bottle. The flames spread, collapsing the wooden ceiling, they told the broadcaster.

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.

Another witness speaking to BFMTV described people smashing windows to escape the blaze, 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 and likened what he saw to a horror movie as he watched from across the street.

Officials described how the blaze likely triggered the release of combustible gases that ignited violently and caused what English-speaking firefighters call a flashover or backdraft.

“This evening should have been a moment of celebration and coming together, but it turned into a nightmare,” said Mathias Reynard, head of the regional government of the Valais Canton.

The injured were so numerous that the intensive care unit and operating theater at the regional hospital quickly hit full capacity, Reynard said.

Crans-Montana is less than 5 kilometers (3 miles) from Sierre, Switzerland, where 28 people, including many children, were killed when a bus from Belgium crashed inside a Swiss tunnel in 2012.

In a region busy with tourists skiing on the slopes, the authorities have called on the local population to show caution in the coming days to avoid any accidents that could require medical resources that are already overwhelmed.

With high-altitude ski runs rising around 3,000 meters (nearly 9,850 feet) in the heart of the Valais region’s snowy peaks and pine forests, Crans-Montana is one of the top venues on the World Cup circuit. The resort will host the best men’s and women’s downhill racers, including Lindsey Vonn, for their final events before the Milan Cortina Olympics in February. The town’s Crans-sur-Sierre golf club stages the European Masters each August on a picturesque course.

The Swiss blaze on Thursday came 25 years after an inferno in the Dutch fishing town of Volendam on New Year’s Eve, which killed 14 people and injured more than 200 as they celebrated in a cafe.

Swiss President Guy Parmelin said in a social media post that the government’s “thoughts go to the victims, to the injured and their relatives, to whom it addresses its sincere condolences.”

Thursday was Parmelin’s first day in office as the seven members of Switzerland’s government take turns holding the presidency for one year. Out of respect for the families of the victims, he delayed a traditional New Year’s address to the nation meant to be broadcast Thursday afternoon, Swiss broadcasters SRF and RTS reported.

Dazio reported from Berlin and Leicester reported from Paris. Geir Moulson in Berlin and Graham Dunbar in Geneva contributed to this report.

This story has been corrected to fix the spelling of the name of Mathias Reynard, head of the regional government of the Valais Canton.

ZURICH, Nov 27 (Reuters) – Two Swiss lawmakers asked prosecutors to examine whether gifts by Swiss business leaders to U.S. President Donald Trump — including a Rolex watch and a gold bar — violated Switzerland’s anti-bribery laws, although a source close to the delegation said they complied with the laws of both countries.

Switzerland this month struck a framework agreement with the U.S. to cut a 39% tariff on Swiss goods to 15%. The deal came 10 days after a delegation of Swiss business leaders visited Trump in the Oval Office, bearing the gifts.

“The gifts were presented to the Presidential Library on behalf of the group who attended the meeting, in full compliance with both U.S. and Swiss law,” a person close to the business delegation told Reuters, adding that the presents were cleared with the White House ethics counsel.

Raphael Mahaim and Greta Gysin, both Green Party members of parliament, said in a letter to the public prosecutor that the legality of the gifts should be assessed by the judicial system.

“The end does not justify all means, especially when respect for important provisions of our legal order is at stake,” they wrote, asking the prosecutor to determine whether the gifts violated the Swiss Criminal Code. The public prosecutor did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.

Executives of MSC, Rolex, Partners Group, Mercuria, Richemont and MKS took part in the meeting with Trump, according to a statement seen by Reuters.

Rolex and MKS declined to comment. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

When asked for comment, Alfred Gantner, a co-founder of Partners Group who attended the meeting, said public–private collaboration had delivered a much-needed resolution to the Swiss-U.S. tariff dispute.

The other companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Under Swiss law, any person can report an offence to a criminal justice authority, which then decides whether criminal proceedings are initiated.

It is unclear whether the prosecutor will open a proceeding. Mahaim said he does not expect legal consequences for the tariff deal of any future finding by the judicial system.

Offering a foreign public official an “undue advantage” to influence a decision can carry up to five years in prison or a fine. The lawmakers’ letter listed the gifts but did not name which companies or individuals presented them.

(Reporting by Emma Farge in Geneva and Ariane Luthi in Zurich; Editing by Ros Russell and Bill Berkrot)

May 25 (Reuters) – Five skiers have been found dead on a Swiss mountain close to the luxury ski resort of Zermatt, after emergency services were alerted to some abandoned skis at 4,000 meters (13,000 feet), the prosecutors’ office in Canton Valais said on Sunday.

Skiers notified the authorities on Saturday afternoon about the skis found on the slopes of the Rimpfischhorn mountain, east of Zermatt and south of the village of Saas Fee.

Rescue workers found the bodies near the Adlergletscher glacier after air and ground searches in the area in southwest Switzerland near the border with Italy, the prosecutor’s office said.

Local airline Air Zermatt said that three of the bodies were found on the debris of an avalanche a few hundred meters below where the skis were spotted.

The other two were discovered higher up the 4,199 meter-high mountain, it added.

The airline’s aircraft are deployed for search missions and other emergencies.

The identities of the five have not been established yet, and an investigation has been launched into what caused the accident, Valais prosecutors said in a statement.

Zermatt is one of Switzerland’s premier Alpine resorts, visited by affluent British and other European skiers.