Twelve people, including eight children, were killed early on Wednesday when flames swept through a public housing apartment building in the US city of Philadelphia.
The blaze began at around 06:00 local time (11:00 GMT) in a public housing block in the north of the city. Deputy Fire Commissioner Craig Murphy told reporters it was one of the worst fires he had ever seen.
He added that eight other residents had managed to escape the building. It is believed there were 26 people in the three-storey block at the time of the fire.
The building is owned by the government funded Philadelphia Housing Authority, and it has been legally divided into two apartments since the 1950s.
Officials said that at the last inspection of the building in 2020 there had been four working smoke detectors, but none of them went off during the fire.
Mr Murphy told reporters that while authorities do not currently consider the cause of the fire to be suspicious, there will still be a thorough investigation due to the loss of life.
Speaking during the press conference, the city’s Mayor Jim Kenney said, that this is without a doubt one of the most tragic days in the city’s history, the loss of so many people in such a tragic way. He said, losing so many kids is just devastating.