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.

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.