Turkish ski resort fire kills 10, forces guests to jump from windows

Ankara, Turkey - A fire at a ski resort hotel in Turkey's Bolu mountains killed at least 10 people on Tuesday and forced panicked guests to jump out of windows in the middle of the night.

More than 30 people were injured.

The blaze began around 3:30 a.m. (0030 GMT) on the restaurant floor of the 11-storey Grand Kartal Hotel at the Kartalkaya ski resort in northwest Turkey, authorities said.

Broadcasters showed several fire engines surrounding the charred building, with white bed sheets tied together and dangling from one upper-floor window.

One guest told NTV he saw people panicking and jumping from windows to escape. Another told Ekol TV that he and his family woke up to the fire, entered smoke-filled corridors and eventually jumped from a lower-floor window.

Bolu governor Abdulaziz Aydin said there were 234 guests at the wooden-fronted hotel lying at the base of several ski slopes which was still smouldering in the early afternoon.

Authorities said they were investigating what caused the fire. It coincided with school holidays when many families from nearby Istanbul and Ankara head to the Bolu mountains to ski.

Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya gave a latest toll on X of 10 dead and 32 injured. More than 250 rescuers were at the scene.

(Reporting by Huseyin Hayatsever; Writing by Jonathan Spicer; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Andrew Cawthorne)