partygoers celebrated the arrival of the new year in the early hours of Thursday morning, Swiss police say. A fire broke out at 1:30am (00:30 GMT) at Le Constellation, a bar in the centre of the luxury Alpine ski resort town of Crans-Montana in southwestern Switzerland, police said in a statement on Thursday. The bar is a popular tourist venue in the town. At the time of the incident, more than 100 people were present, Swiss media outlet Blick reported, quoting police. Crans-Montana is about 200km south of the Swiss capital, Bern. “There has been an explosion of unknown origin,” Gaetan Lathion, a police spokesperson in Wallis canton in southwestern Switzerland, told the AFP news agency.

It is unclear how the fire was ignited and spread. However, later on Thursday, AP reported that Swiss officials were calling the blaze an “embrasement généralisé”. It explained that this is a French firefighting term which describes how a fire can release combustible gases which can then “ignite violently and cause what English-speaking firefighters would call a flashover or a backdraft”.

During a news conference on Thursday, Frederic Gisler, the police commander in the Valais Canton in southwestern Switzerland, told reporters that “several dozens” of people were presumed dead in the incident, without specifying the exact number. He added that more than 100 people had been injured. (Aljazeera)