Police say blaze tore through crowded bar where people were seeing in the new year

About 40 people are believed to have been killed and 100 injured after a fire tore through a crowded bar during a New Year’s Eve party in the Swiss ski resort of Crans-Montana, according to the Italian foreign ministry.

Swiss police confirmed several dozen partygoers were dead. The victims could not be immediately identified because of the severity of their burns, the ministry said. It confirmed arson was not responsible, with the blaze thought to be the result of an accident.

“There has been an explosion of unknown origin,” Gaëtan Lathion, a police spokesperson in the canton of Valais in south-west Switzerland, told Agence France-Presse. “There are several injured and several dead.”