Police confirms 12 dead in London tower block fire -

UPDATED: A massive fire, which has engulfed a high-rise apartment block in west London, has left at least 12 people dead and more than 70 others injured, police officials say.

Firefighters were called to Grenfell Tower, in north Kensington, at 00:54 BST and are still trying to put out the fire.

Authorities said that the number is expected to rise and the recovery operation will be “lengthy” and “complicated.”

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has said that “a lot of people” are unaccounted for after the fire at Grenfell Tower in north Kensington.

More than 200 firefighters were sent to tackle the fire which was reported just after 1.15am.

Up to 600 people are believed to have been inside Tower’s 120 flats when the blaze tore through the 24-storey building in the early hours.

Eighteen people are in critical care after 79 injured people were taken to hospital. But many are still missing after residents were left trapped on upper floors as flames rapidly ripped up the block after initially being told to stay in their homes.

A firefighter who helped tackle the Grenfell Tower blaze has compared the scene to a “war zone”.

The emergency worker, called Terry, who spent eight hours working at the scene in North Kensington, said he had “seen nothing like it” during his 27 years with the fire service.

He told LBC Radio: “We had to literally run under police riot shields because of the amount of flaming debris, just to get into the building.

“There was one small staircase that everyone was going up. It was just like the images of 9/11.

“We were going up the staircase and people were coming down in smoke. I don’t know how they were breathing.”

The streets around the tower have been sealed off and there was chaos there with “people in night clothes, no shoes, crying, looking for family.”