New York City's mayor says 12 people have been killed in a Bronx apartment building fire, including a child around a year old.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said during a briefing late Thursday that four more residents of the building were fighting for their lives with serious injuries. The Fire Department of New York said earlier that 15 people were seriously injured in the fire near the Bronx Zoo.
Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro called the fire, "historic in its magnitude,'' because of the number of lives lost.
The fire was reported just before 7 p.m. at a five-story building a block from the Bronx Zoo. About 170 firefighters fought the fire and rescued fleeing tenants, working in temperatures in the teens.
Fifty-nine-year-old Thierno Diallo says he was asleep in his ground floor apartment when he heard banging on the door. Diallo says it took him a moment to realize what was happening. He says he heard people screaming, "There's a fire in the building!'' He ran out in his bathrobe, jacket and sandals.
Neighbourhood resident Robert Gonzalez, who has a friend who lives in the building, says she got out on a fire escape.
Temperatures are in the negative-teens (Celsius) in New York.
One of the deadliest fires in recent memory happened elsewhere in the Bronx in 2007, a decade ago. Nine children and one adult died in a blaze sparked by a space heater.