New York fire injures 23, including children

NEW YORK - A fire destroyed a building and injured 23 people on Tuesday, just days after the city's deadliest inferno in 25 years.

The blaze broke out in the Bronx, the same northern borough where last week's fire claimed 12 lives.

"Our units arrived and were immediately faced with heavy fire. Numerous people were brought out of the building by the firefighters on scene," said New York fire chief Daniel Nigro. "They've all been transported, and they will all be OK, thankfully," he said, noting there were at least nine children among the injured.

The fire left 11 families, including 29 adults and 11 children, homeless.

Barely four minutes after the emergency call, around 200 firefighters arrived at a three-floor, redbrick building close to the Bronx Zoo. It took the fire crews eight hours to control the blaze on the Bronx's Commonwealth Avenue. The fire broke out in a furniture factory on the ground floor of the building and spread quickly.

The cause of the fire is not immediately known.

One resident told NBC News he fled the building, barefoot and barechested, with his three children into freezing temperatures that dipped as low as -10 C.

"Praying for a swift recovery for all those injured," said Mayor Bill de Blasio on Twitter, thanking the fire department for its response.

On Dec 28, another fire at an apartment block close to the Bronx Zoo was started by a 3-year-old boy who was playing with stove burners. That inferno killed 12 people, four of them children.

AFP - Xinhua