12 dead, including 1-yr-old, 4 injured as fire guts New York building

New York: A fire tore through a five-storey building in New York's borough of the Bronx late on Thursday night, killing at least 12 people including a child, and leaving four others critically injured, the mayor said.

The cause of the blaze at 2363 Prospect Avenue was not immediately clear, but it began on the first floor and spread rapidly to the third floor, officials said.

About 170 firefighters worked in bone-chilling cold, just 15 degrees, to rescue people from the building. Water sprayed from hoses froze into ice on the street.

"I'm sorry to report 12 New Yorkers are dead, including one child as young as one year old," Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters at the scene after the blaze was extinguished by fire fighters.

Four other people were critically injured and fighting for their lives, officials said.

"We may lose others as well," the mayor said. Windows on some upper floors were smashed and blackened.

The victims range in age from one to more than 50 years old, de Blasio said. A nearby school has been set up as a shelter to house those who were evacuated from the building.

Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro called the fire, "historic in its magnitude," because of the number of lives lost.

The five-alarm fire broke out in the building in the city's northernmost borough at around 7:00 pm on a bitterly cold night, with temperatures well below freezing.

"The smoke was crazy, people screaming, 'Get out!" a witness, Jamal Flicker, told the New York Post. "I heard a woman yelling, 'We're trapped, help!"

According to city records, the building had no elevator. Fire escapes were visible on the facade of the building.

One of the deadliest fires in recent city memory happened elsewhere in the Bronx in 2007. Nine children and one adult died in a blaze sparked by a space heater.