Photos from New Year’s celebrations at a ski resort in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, show the likely cause of the intense blaze that claimed 40 lives.

One image shows partygoers holding up champagne bottles with lit sparklers, as the ceiling at the Le Constellation bar in the basement begins to catch fire.

Initial findings indicate the sparkler candles likely sparked the horrendous blaze that spread rapidly among the mostly young crowd of ​revellers in the early hours of New Year’s Day.

“Everything suggests that the fire started from the burning candles or ‘Bengal lights’ that had been attached to champagne bottles,” local prosecutor Beatrice Pilloud said.

“From there, a rapid, very rapid and widespread conflagration ensued.”

The candles, which give off a stream of upward-shooting sparks, were the same type that is commonly available for parties, officials said.

The inferno is being described as a “flashover fire”, in which everything ignites almost simultaneously.

The investigation was also checking whether the ceiling’s insulation foam was to blame for the rapid spread of the fire, Pilloud said, amid speculation that the material was extremely flammable.

The official toll is 40 dead while 119 have been injured, many of them very seriously. Those numbers are not final, officials said.

Victims were transferred to specialist burn ‍units across Europe as they fight for their lives.

Many of the injured were in their teens to mid-20s, police said.

Meanwhile, investigators focused on the painful task of identifying the burned ⁠bodies, warning that this process was very sensitive and would take time.

So severe were the burns that Swiss officials said it could take days before they name all those killed in the fire.

“Many of those injured are still fighting for their lives today,” Valais area chief Mathias Reynard told a news conference.

Of the injured, 113 have been identified, 71 of whom are Swiss, 14 French, 11 Italian, four Serbian, ‌one Bosnian, one Belgian, one Polish, one Portuguese and one Luxembourger, police chief Frederic Gisler told the ​same news conference.

The nationalities of 14 injured people were still unclear.

Australia has also said one of its citizens was injured.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has confirmed consular assistance is being provided to the family of the Australian, who is receiving medical care.

Further investigations will show if anyone needs to be held criminally liable for negligence, she added.

Emanuele Galeppini, a 16-year-old Italian international golfer who lived in Dubai, was the first victim to be identified publicly.

Parents and friends of missing youths issued pleas for news of their loved ones as foreign embassies scrambled to work out if their citizens were among those caught up in one of the worst tragedies to befall modern ​Switzerland.

Laetitia Brodard-Sitre, the mother of 16-year-old Arthur, was looking for information near the site of the blaze.

“We are together, we are in shock, we take each other in our arms and we cry. ‍We try to give each other hope,” she said of her relatives and others of those missing.

Marco, a 20-year-old from Milan, told Reuters outside the Constellation bar that twenty of his friends were missing.

“Some of them are injured, in bad condition. Some of them are completely safe. And some of our friends, we don’t have any news. They told us they never found them,” ​he said.

“Nobody ​can help us find our friends.”

Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, ​who was in Switzerland, said that 13 Italians were in hospital and six registered as missing.

France’s embassy to ​Switzerland said eight French citizens were unaccounted for while another nine had been injured and were receiving care.

Visitors and residents of Crans-Montana, which is a popular draw not only for skiers but also golfers, were stunned by the inferno.

Dozens of people left flowers or lit candles on a makeshift altar at the top of the road leading to the bar which police had cordoned off.

Some cried, others quietly hugged one another.

“It could have been us,” Emma, an 18-year-old from Geneva, said outside the cordoned-off bar.

“There was an enormous queue so we decided not to go in,” she said.

“I see those missing and it’s all people our age.”

-with AAP/AP