Witnesses describe chaos and panic at Turkish ski resort as fire ripped through hotel where 79 died

KARTALKAYA, Turkey (AP) — As flames tore through a 12-story hotel at a popular ski resort in northwestern Turkey, friends Esra Karakisa and Halime Cetin watched helplessly as the horror unfolded before them. Some people were leaning out of smoke-filled rooms pleading for help, while others made the harrowing decision to jump.

Tuesday's fire at the Grand Kartal Hotel, in Kartalkaya, in the Koroglu mountains in Bolu province left at least 79 people dead and 51 injured. It came near the start of a two-week winter break for schools when hotels in the region are filled to capacity.

“There was no one around. They were calling for firefighters. They were breaking the windows. Some could no longer stand the smoke and flames, and they jumped,” Cetin, an employee at a hotel adjacent to the Grand Kartal, told The Associated Press.

Karakisa said: “It was awful. We were terrified. People were screaming. The cries of children especially affected us. We wanted to help but there was nothing we could do. I couldn’t look it was so terrifying.”

Authorities have assigned six prosecutors to investigate the cause of the fire, which appeared to have started at the restaurant section on the fourth floor of the wooden-clad hotel and spread quickly through to the upper floors.

On Wednesday a deputy mayor and the acting fire chief for Bolu were both detained, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported, bringing to 11 the number of people taken into custody as part of the investigation, including the hotel's owner.

Flags at government buildings and Turkish diplomatic missions abroad were lowered to half-staff as the nation shocked by the disaster observed a day of mourning for the victims.

The Bolu chief prosecutor's office on Wednesday raised the death toll to 79 from the previous 76. Authorities have so far identified 56 of the victims, Anadolu reported.

Twelve people were still being treated in hospitals, including one person who was in serious condition, the Health Ministry said.

On Wednesday, Turkey began conducting funeral prayers for the deceased.

Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan traveled to Bolu from the capital Ankara to attend the funeral of eight members of the Gultekin family, who were related to an official of his ruling party.

“Our hearts are broken,” Erdogan said during the funeral of Zehra Sena Gultekin, her husband, their four children and another relative. “May God grant us patience.”

In Ankara, mourners joined officials at the Ahmet Hamdi Akseki Mosque to bid farewell to Ahmet Cetiz, a doctor at a private hospital in the city, his wife Habibe and their sons, Vedat and Esat. Vedat's twin brother, Sedat, is also believed to have died, but his body has not been identified yet, the private DHA news agency reported.

The funeral was also held in Ankara on Wednesday for 15-year-old high Eren Bagci, a skiing enthusiast who was in Kartalkaya with his friends, DHA said.

The hotel had 238 registered guests. The fire was reported at 3:27 a.m. local time and the fire department began to respond at 4:15 a.m., the interior minister told reporters.

Officials and witnesses said the rescue efforts were hampered by the fact that part of the 161-room hotel is on the side of a cliff.

According to Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, the hotel underwent inspections in 2021 and 2024, and “no negative situation regarding fire competence” was reported by the fire department.

Karakisa said she eventually brought clothes and water for the survivors while others rushed to bring mattresses for people to jump onto or propped up ladders against the wall to help them escape.

Among those who placed mattresses was Baris Salgur, a cleaner in a nearby hotel.

“They were saying, ‘Please help, we’re burning!' They were saying, ‘Call the fire department.' We were trying to calm them down, but there was nothing we could do, we couldn’t get in either,” Salgur, 19, said. "It was very high, we couldn’t extend a rope or anything of course. We were trying to do the best we could.

“People jumped from a great height, I couldn’t look. There were two women at the top floor. The flames had literally entered the room. They couldn’t stand it and jumped.”

Salgur described seeing a man on the top floors holding a baby and shouting for a mattress he could throw his baby on.

"We told him to be a little calmer. He waited, then the fire department came and took them (out), but unfortunately the baby had died from smoke inhalation,” he said.

Associated Press writers Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, and Robert Badendieck in Istanbul contributed to this report.

Relatives and friends attend the funeral of Yilmaz Saritas and his children Nehir and Doruk, who were among the 76 victims who died in a fire at the Kartalkaya ski resort in Bolu province, at Karsıyaka cemetery in Ankara, Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. (Ugur Yildirim/Dia Photo via AP)

Relatives and friends mourn during the funeral of Yilmaz Saritas and his children Nehir and Doruk, who were among the 76 victims who died in a fire at the Kartalkaya ski resort in Bolu province, at Karsıyaka cemetery in Ankara, Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. (Ugur Yildirim/Dia Photo via AP)

Relatives and friends mourn during the funeral of Yilmaz Saritas and his children Nehir and Doruk, who were among the 76 victims who died in a fire at the Kartalkaya ski resort in Bolu province, at Karsıyaka cemetery in Ankara, Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. (Ugur Yildirim/Dia Photo via AP)

Relatives and friends mourn during the funeral of Yilmaz Saritas and his children Nehir and Doruk, who were among the 76 victims who died in a fire at the Kartalkaya ski resort in Bolu province, at Karsıyaka cemetery in Ankara, Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. (Ugur Yildirim/Dia Photo via AP)

Relatives and friends mourn during the funeral of Yilmaz Saritas and his children Nehir and Doruk, who were among the 76 victims who died in a fire at the Kartalkaya ski resort in Bolu province, at Karsıyaka cemetery in Ankara, Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. (Ugur Yildirim/Dia Photo via AP)

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, right, attends the funeral of members of the Gultekin family at the Kalici Konutlar Merkez mosque in Bolu, northwest Turkey, on Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. Eight members of the Gultekin family died in a fire that broke out at the Kartalkaya ski resort in Bolu province. (Adem Altan/Pool Photo via AP)

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, right, attends the funeral of members of the Gultekin family at the Kalici Konutlar Merkez mosque in Bolu, northwest Turkey, on Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. Eight members of the Gultekin family died in a fire that broke out at the Kartalkaya ski resort in Bolu province. (Adem Altan/Pool Photo via AP)

Relatives carry the coffin of one of the members of the Gultekin family during their funeral at the Kalici Konutlar Merkez mosque in Bolu, northwest Turkey, on Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. Eight members of the Gultekin family died in a fire that broke out at the Kartalkaya ski resort in Bolu province. (Adem Altan/Pool Photo via AP)

Relatives carry the coffin of one of the members of the Gultekin family during their funeral at the Kalici Konutlar Merkez mosque in Bolu, northwest Turkey, on Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. Eight members of the Gultekin family died in a fire that broke out at the Kartalkaya ski resort in Bolu province. (Adem Altan/Pool Photo via AP)

People attend the funeral of members of the Gultekin family at the Kalici Konutlar Merkez mosque in Bolu, northwest Turkey, on Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. Eight members of the Gultekin family died in a fire that broke out at the Kartalkaya ski resort in Bolu province. (Adem Altan/Pool Photo via AP)

Firefighters work on the aftermath of a fire that broke out at a hotel in the ski resort of Kartalkaya, located in Bolu province, northwest Turkey, on Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

Firefighters work on the aftermath of a fire that broke out at a hotel in the ski resort of Kartalkaya, located in Bolu province, northwest Turkey, on Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

Tightened bed sheets hang from a window of a hotel where a fire broke out at the Kartalkaya ski resort in Bolu province, northwest Turkey, on Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

A Turkish flag flag flies at half staff outside a hotel where a fire broke out at the Kartalkaya ski resort in Bolu province, northwest Turkey, on Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

Firefighters and emergency teams work on the aftermath of a fire that broke out at a hotel in the ski resort of Kartalkaya, located in Bolu province, northwest Turkey, on Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

Firefighters work to extinguish a fire in a hotel at a ski resort of Kartalkaya, located in Bolu province, in northwest Turkey, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (Enes Ozkan/IHA via AP)

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The United States said an agreement has been reached to ensure safe navigation in the Black Sea as it wrapped up three days of talks Tuesday with Ukrainian and Russian delegations in Saudi Arabia on prospective steps toward peace.

U.S. experts met separately with Ukrainian and Russian representatives in Riyadh, and the White House issued separate joint statements about the talks with Ukraine and Russia. It said the sides have “agreed to ensure safe navigation, eliminate the use of force, and prevent the use of commercial vessels for military purposes in the Black Sea.”

Details of the prospective deal are yet to be released, but it appears to mark a revival of a 2022 agreement to ensure safe transit via Ukraine's Black Sea ports that was brokered by the United Nations and Turkey and was halted by Russia the following year. Russia had said the agreement failed to ensure safety of its Black Sea exports.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in televised comments Tuesday that Moscow is open to the revival of the agreement but warned that Russian interests must be protected.

In an apparent reference to the Russian demands, the White House statement on the talks with Russia noted that the U.S. “will help restore Russia’s access to the world market for agricultural and fertilizer exports, lower maritime insurance costs, and enhance access to ports and payment systems for such transactions.”

The White House statement also mentioned that the parties agreed to develop measures for implementing an agreement reached in President Donald Trump’s calls with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to ban strikes against energy facilities in Russia and Ukraine.

After the Trump-Putin call last week, the White House said the partial ceasefire would include ending attacks on “energy and infrastructure,” while the Kremlin declared that the agreement referred more narrowly to “energy infrastructure."

Meanwhile, a Kremlin official said Tuesday that the talks between U.S. and Russian officials in Riyadh the previous day would likely lead to further contacts between Washington and Moscow, but that no concrete plans have yet been made.

The three days of meetings — which did not include direct Russian-Ukrainian negotiations — are part of an attempt to hammer out details on a partial pause in the 3-year-old war in Ukraine. It has been a struggle to reach even a limited, 30-day ceasefire — which Moscow and Kyiv agreed to in principle last week -- with both sides continuing to attack each other with drones and missiles.

On Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the the outcome of the U.S-Russia talks in Riyadh “has been reported in the capitals” and was currently being “analyzed” by Moscow and Washington, but that the Kremlin has no plans to release further details of what was discussed to the public.

“We’re talking about technical negotiations, negotiations with immersion in details," Peskov said, adding that while there are currently no plans for Trump and Putin to speak, such a conversation could be quickly organized if the need arises.

“There is an understanding that the contacts will continue, but there is nothing concrete at the moment,” Peskov said. He added that that there are no plans to hold a three-way meeting between Russia, the U.S. and Ukraine.

Senior Russian lawmaker Grigory Karasin, who took part in the Russia-U.S. talks in Riyadh on Monday, told Russian state news agency RIA Novosti that the conversation was “very interesting, difficult, but quite constructive.”

“We were at it all day from morning until late at night,” Karasin was quoted by the agency as saying on Tuesday.

The Russian Defense Ministry said on Tuesday that Ukraine had "continued deliberate drone strikes against Russia’s civilian energy facilities.”

One Ukrainian drone attack on Monday knocked down a high-voltage power line linking the Rostov nuclear power plant with the city of Tikhoretsk in the southern Krasnodar region, the ministry said, adding that another drone strike had occurred on the Svatovo gas distribution station in the Russia-occupied Ukrainian region of Luhansk.

"Zelenskyy confirms his inability to observe agreements and makes it impossible for outside guarantors of any potential agreements to control him,” the ministry said.

In Ukraine, the number of people injured Monday in a Russian missile strike on the center of the city of Sumy rose to 101 people including 23 children, according to the Sumy regional administration.

The strike on Sumy, across the border from Russia’s Kursk region which was partially occupied by Ukraine since August, hit residential buildings and a school, which had to be evacuated due to the attack.

Meanwhile, Russian forces launched one ballistic missile and 139 long-range strike and decoy drones into Ukraine overnight, according to the Ukrainian air force. Those attacks affected seven regions of Ukraine and injured multiple people.

Associated Press writer Dasha Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed to this report.

In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, a paramedic evacuates an elderly resident whose house was hit by Russian attack in Sumy, Ukraine, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)

In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, firefighters put out the fire following a Russian attack in Sumy, Ukraine, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)

In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, a psychologist works with residents of houses which were hit by a Russian attack in Sumy, Ukraine, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)

In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, firefighters put out the fire following a Russian attack in Sumy, Ukraine, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)