Police in Laos arrested the manager and seven staff members of a backpacker hostel in Vang Vieng following the incident. deaths of six tourists of suspected methanol poisoning, state media reported Tuesday.
Two Danish citizens, one Americana Briton and two Australians died following what media reports said was a night on the town on November 12.
Among the victims are British Simone White28 years old, two young Australians, Holly Bowles and her best friend Bianca Jones, and two young Danish womenAnne-Sofie Orkild Coyman and Freja Vennervald Sorensen, BBC reported. Only one of the victims, James Louis Hutson, a 57-year-old American citizen, was a man.
Police arrested the 34-year-old manager of the Nana Backpacker hostel and seven other employees for questioning, the Laos Post reported on Tuesday.
Anupam Nath / AP
Local media reported that all those arrested were Vietnamese nationals.
The owners of the now-closed inn have previously denied serving illicit alcohol, the The BBC reported.
Vang Vieng has been a staple on the Southeast Asian backpacker route since Laos’ secretive communist rulers opened the country to tourism decades ago.
The town was once synonymous with alcohol and drug fueled jungle parties for backpackers, but has since been rebranded as an ecotourism destination.
Alcohol contaminated with methanol is believed to be the cause of these deaths.
Methanol is a toxic alcohol that can be added to alcohol to increase its potency, but can cause blindness, liver damage and death.
On their travel advice websites, British and Australian authorities have warned their citizens to be wary of methanol poisoning when drinking alcohol in Laos.
On Saturday, the Laos government expressed “its sincere sympathy and deepest condolences to the families of the deceased”, adding that an investigation was underway to find the cause of the incident.