Some had returned to the hotel year after year. Their deaths — amid dozens of others at the hotel — have stirred grief and outrage.

Witnesses say guests at a ski resort hotel in Turkey tried to escape a deadly fire with ropes and sheets hung from windows.

Twenty children were among the 76 fatal victims of a fire that spread through a Turkish ski resort in the early morning hours of Jan. 21, according to local media. The fire took place at the Grand Kartal Hotel in the resort of Kartalkaya in northwestern Turkish province of Bolu.

Witnesses say guests at a ski resort hotel in Turkey tried to escape a deadly fire with ropes and sheets hung from windows.

As flames tore through a 12-story hotel at a popular ski resort in northwestern Turkey, friends Esra Karakisa and Halime Cetin stood helpless, paralyzed by the horror unfolding before them: people leaning out of smoke-filled rooms pleading for help and others making the harrowing decision to leap out.

The fire coincided with school holidays when many families from nearby Istanbul and Ankara head to the Bolu mountains to ski.

Officials in Turkey say that a fire has raged through a 12-story hotel at a popular ski resort in the northwestern part of the country during a school holiday, killing at least 76 people.

Desperate guests at a Turkish ski resort that exploded into flames tried to escape using bedsheets as ropes hanging from the windows, while others died after trying to jump to safety.