Eight staff members of a backpacker hostel in Laos have been detained by local authorities as they investigate the deaths of six foreign tourists from suspected methanol poisoning, according to state-affiliated media in the Southeast Asian country.

Police in Laos have detained eight members of staff at a backpacker hostel following the deaths of six tourists from suspected methanol poisoning last week. According to local media, those detained include workers and management from the Nana Backpacker Hostel in the town of Vang Vieng, where several of the tourists who later died had stayed.

Laos police have arrested the owner, manager and six staff members of the Laotian hostel at the centre of a spate of fatal ­methanol poisonings as the ­grieving parents of Bianca Jones and Holly Bowles brought their daughters’ bodies back to ­Australia.