PARIS: At least 12 people were killed Wednesday when a massive fire tore through a West London apartment block.
The death toll, which police warned was likely to rise, already surpassed that of a residential tower blaze in Camberwell, south London in July 2009, when three children and three adults perished.
Following are other major apartment building fires around the world this century.
June 3, 2010: About 120 people died in a massive fire that hit a densely populated historic neighbourhood in Dhaka. Six large buildings were gutted by the flames, triggered by cooking for a wedding feast, a government probe finds.
"The feast was being cooked on makeshift stoves right next to a chemical warehouse, which heated up the extremely flammable chemicals," an official report said. More than 40 members of the wedding party were among the dead.
November 15, 2010: A huge fire in a 28-storey apartment building in the Shanghai district of Jingan killed 58 people. The tower was being renovated at the time, and some panicked residents sought refuge on scaffolding surrounding the structure, or desperately attempted to jump to safety.
March 1, 2002: Nineteen people died and 25 were injured when a nine-storey building was set ablaze in Nanchong, southwestern China. The fire started in a wholesale food market that occupies the first three stories, before spreading to upper floors where about 200 residents lived.
April 25, 2011: Eighteen people died and around 20 were injured after an electric tricycle caught fire next to a four-storey building in Beijing that was built without a permit.
The victims were all migrant workers, the Xinhua news agency said.
September 4, 2005: Smoke from a fire in the entrance to an 18-storey block of council flats in L'Haÿ-les-Roses,south-east of Paris, killed 18 people and sent 28 to thehospital.
Four girls were convicted of setting fire to mailboxes in the building following a fight and were sentenced to prison terms.
August 26, 2005: A fire in a rundown building in Paris killed 17 people, including 14 children, and injured around 30 others. The location was run by a charity organisation and housed poor African families. Whoever set the fire, which officials said was the result of arson, was never caught.