Fire in a Turkish ski resort in a hotel in Bolu leaves 10 dead

A fire in a hotel in the Turkish ski resort of Bolu has left 10 dead and 32 injured, according to Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya.

At least two of the victims died after jumping from hotel windows, according to Turkish reports.

The fire broke out at the 12-story Grand Kartal hotel at 03:27 local time (00:27 GMT) during a busy holiday period, when 234 people were staying there, he added.

Images circulating in Türkiye showed clothes hanging from windows used by those trying to escape the burning building.

Bolu Governor Abdulaziz Aydin said initial reports suggested the fire had started in the fourth-floor restaurant section of the hotel and had spread to the upper floors.

The hotel was investigating whether guests had been trapped in their rooms as the fire spread.

The governor told reporters that the distance between the hotel, in Kartalkaya, and the center of Bolu, coupled with the frigid weather conditions, meant it took more than an hour for fire trucks to arrive.

Rescue efforts continued into the morning and the Home Secretary said emergency services had deployed 267 people to respond to the fire.

At mid-morning, the local mayor said they were still trying to reach some parts of the hotel.

The Bolu Mountains are popular with skiers from Istanbul and the capital, Ankara, and the hotel was operating at high occupancy at the start of the two-week school holidays.

The northwestern city is about 170 kilometers (105 miles) from Ankara.

Although the fire was limited to one hotel, the governor told Turkish media that a neighboring hotel was evacuated as a precaution.

Ski instructor Necmi Kepcetutan told Turkish television that he had managed to escape because he knew the hotel, while guests who did not know it as well as he did were not so lucky.

“People were shouting at the windows: ‘Save us,’ because there was intense smoke inside. We pulled out 20 to 25 people,” he told NTV.

The circumstances that caused the fire are still unclear.

Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said prosecutors had been assigned to investigate the fire.