Firefighters battled a blaze at a high-rise residential complex in Hong Kong for the second day on Thursday (November 27, 2025), as the death toll rose to 65 in one of the deadliest blazes in the city's modern history.
Thick smoke continued to pour out of some apartments in the Wang Fuk Court complex, a dense cluster of high-rise towers housing thousands of people in Tai Po district, a northern suburb near Hong Kong's border with the mainland. Flames could still be seen inside the buildings on Thursday evening.
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Hong Kong leader John Lee said contact had been lost with 279 people earlier on Thursday. Rescues were continuing in some of the towers, but authorities did not provide updates on the missing or how many were still trapped inside the ravaged buildings on Thursday during a press conference.
Firefighters have been trying to control the flames since midafternoon on Wednesday, when the fire started in bamboo scaffolding and construction netting and then spread across seven of the complex's eight buildings. Fires in four buildings had been effectively put out, with the remaining three towers under control, authorities said Thursday afternoon.
