12 dead, 15 injured after fire rips through Bronx apartment building

A fire truck.
(Image credit: Getty Images)

A fire that broke out Thursday night in a five-story New York City apartment building quickly grew into a four-alarm blaze, leaving at least 12 people dead and 15 injured, fire officials said.

About 170 firefighters worked to extinguish the fire in the Belmont section of the Bronx, near the Bronx Zoo. One of the victims is a baby, NBC New York reports. Witnesses told the New York Post they heard people screaming they were trapped, and one man was shouting, "My babies are dead! My babies are dead" The cause of the blaze is under investigation.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.