A fire at a ski resort in Turkey this week is now known to have killed 78 people, the justice ministry has announced, saying all the victims had now been identified.
Yesterday evening, the prosecutor's office in Bolu, the capital of the province where the tragedy occurred, had given a figure of 79 deaths.
Entire families died when the huge fire swept through the Grand Kartal Hotel in Kartalkaya resort in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
The 12-storey hotel, which had 238 registered guests, was consumed by flames after the fire started on the restaurant floor around 3.30am (12.30 Irish time).
Survivors described scenes of panic as they fled through smoke-filled corridors and jumped from windows to escape.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has declared a day of national mourning following the tragedy, which occurred during the peak of the winter tourism season, with many families from Istanbul and Ankara travelling to the Bolu mountains for skiing.
Questions have multiplied about fire safety measures at the luxury hotel amid growing suspicion that negligence contributed to the high death toll.
Survivors and experts have said the hotel's fire alarm system did not work.
Derya Basyilmaz, head of the Ankara Chamber of Architects who was in Kartalkaya with a team of experts to prepare a report on the tragedy, told AFP the hotel had only one fire escape and no sprinkler system.
So far, 11 people have been arrested, among them the hotel's owner, general manager, director and chief electrician, as well as the head of the Bolu fire department.
