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

ANKARA — As the death toll from an overnight fire at a popular ski resort in northwest Turkey rises to 76, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday that the country will observe a day of national mourning on Wednesday.

A fire raged through a 12-story hotel at a popular ski resort in northwestern Turkey early Tuesday during a school holiday, killing at least 76 people — at least two of them when they jumped from the building to escape the flames,

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

Witnesses have described standing helplessly and paralyzed by the horror of people screaming for help or jumping out of windows as flames tore through a 12-story hotel at a popular ski resort

A fire that erupted in ski resort in Turkey's Bolu mountains killed at least 66 people, the cause of the fire is under investigation.

Dozens of people were killed after a fire ripped through a ski resort hotel in northwestern Turkey on Tuesday, forcing desperate holidaymakers to leap from windows to escape from the flames and smoke.

Guests said no fire alarms could be heard and there was no sign of firefighters for a long period The fire that killed at least 79 people at the Grand Kartal Hotel in the early hours of Monday is one of the deadliest disasters of its kind in Turkish history.