ANK AR A: Turkiye has detained 11 people as part of an investigation into a fire that killed 79 people and injured several at a ski resort in the Bolu mountains, Justice Minister Yilmaz Tune said on Wednesday.

A deputy mayor of the northwestern Bolu province, the head of the municipality`s fire department, the owner and the manager of the hotel were among those detained, Tune said on X.

Several funerals were held on Wednesday for the victims of Tuesday`s blaze, including numerous children. The fire forced panicked hotel guests to jump from windows in the middle of the night.

`Our hearts and souls are hurting,` President Tayyip Erdogan said at a funeral for eight victims from the same family in Bolu in western Turkiye. `I pray for patience for the entire family and our nation.` The bodies of 45 victims were handed over to their families, and forensic DNA tests were being conducted to identify the others, the government said.

Interior Minister on Tuesday had announced that 76 people had been killed in the fire, but the Bolu prosecutor`s office updated the death toll to 79 on Wednesday evening following forensic DNA tests. The fire occurred at the Grand Kartal Hotel in the Kartalkaya ski resort, a 12-storey hotel which had 238 registered guests. It was consumed by flames after the blaze started on the restaurant floor around 3:30am.

Some survivors said they heardno fire alarms during the incident and guests said they had to navigate smoke-filled corridors in complete darkness. The hotel pledged full cooperation with the investigation and said it was `deeply saddened by the losses.` At one funeral in Ankara, the coffins of a family were lined up at the central Ahmet Hamdi Akseki mosque.

The parents, a doctor and teacher, had gone to Kartalkaya with their three children to ski during a school break, witness at the funeral. At least 20 of the fire victims were children, according to local media reports.

Erdogan 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 to ski.

Simmering anger Anger was growing in Turkiye as allegations piled up that negligence played a role in the deaths of 79 people. With the nation observing a day of mourning, grieving families began burying their dead as questions multiplied about fire safety measures at the 12-storey Grand Kartal Hotel perched on a mountaintop in the Kartalkaya resort.

Front pages, including those of the pro-government dailies, were plastered with allegations of negligence which they pointed to as responsible for the shocking death toll. On a freezing foggy morning, with flags flying at half-mast, more than 30 of the 51 injured were stillin hospital, including one in intensive care. `There is no excuse for such a high number of deaths in 2025,` Ozgur Ozel, leader of the main opposition CHP party, said outside the blackened facade of the hotel where rescuers were combing through the ruins.

At a funeral in the nearby town of Bolu for eight members of the same family who died in the blaze, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan could be seen wiping away tears, his head bowed.

`Profoundly disturbing` `When I got to the hotel, there were flames everywhere and we could hear screams,` said Cevdet Can, who runs a nearby ski school.

`I saw one person jump out of the window` to her death, Can said, saying it was seeing children trapped `that upset me most`.

Another ski instructor who escaped the hotel unharmed said he was unable to rescue his pupils, the youngest of whom was six. `I lost five of my students who were staying on the 6th and 7th floors, 58-year-old Necmi Kepcetutan said, saying another colleague had jumped to her death.

The blaze broke out around 3:30am, sparking panic among the guests, many of whom tried to climb out of the windows, using bedsheets as ropes. Some fell to their deaths, media reports said.

Speaking to Turkish media outlets, many survivors told the same story: that there were no alarms warning them about the fire, no fire doors nor safe ways for people to exit the hotel.-Agencies