Blaze toll at 40 as Swiss face task of identifying victims

CRANS-MONTANA, Switzerland — Investigators on Friday set about the painful task of identifying the burned bodies of a blaze that engulfed a crowded bar ‍ ‍and killed around 40 people at a New Year's Eve party in the upscale Swiss ski resort of Crans-Montana.

So severe were the burns suffered by the mostly young crowd of revelers at the Le Constellation bar that Swiss officials said it could take days before they name all the ‍ ‍victims of the fire that also injured well over 100 people, many of them seriously.