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Hong Kong, Nov 27: The death toll from Hong Kong’s worst fire in its peacetime history has risen to at least 44, authorities have said, with hundreds of others still unaccounted for.

Hong Kong leader John Lee confirmed the updated death toll early on Thursday, a day after flames tore through an eight-building apartment estate in the northern part of the Chinese city.

Lee told reporters that at least 279 people were still missing, while 29 had been hospitalized, including seven who were in a critical condition.

According to Al Jazeera, firefighters worked into the night, as thick, black smoke billowed from the 31-storey towers and orange flames lit up the sky at the Wang Fuk Court estate in the Tai Po district.

Derek Armstrong Chan, deputy director of fire services, told a news conference on Thursday that darkness overnight had hampered their operations and firefighters were still having difficulty accessing two of the buildings.

“Up to this moment, the temperature inside the fire scene is still very high,” Chan told reporters.

Chan earlier told reporters that firefighters had struggled to respond to residents’ pleas for help, with falling debris and scaffolding posing a danger to front-line personnel.

 Hong Kong’s Fire Services Department said that nine people had been declared dead at the scene.

Local media reported that some residents were believed to be trapped inside their homes.

Police said they arrested three men on suspicion of manslaughter in connection with the fire, without providing details of their alleged wrongdoing.

The fire is Hong Kong’s deadliest blaze since World War II, when Japanese forces occupied the then British-ruled territory.

Before Wednesday’s blaze, the fire at the 1996 Garley Building in Kowloon had ranked as the worst fire in peacetime, with 41 lives lost.

Reporting from Tai Po on Wednesday, journalist Laura Westbrook told Al Jazeera that when the fire started, it spread through bamboo scaffolding that was affixed to the buildings in the housing estate.

Frames of scaffolding were seen tumbling to the ground as firefighters battled the blaze, while scores of fire engines and ambulances lined the road below the development, witnesses told Reuters.

People’s News Monitoring Service