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A fire that raged from the basement of a 16-storey block in central Istanbul left at least 29 people dead Tuesday, with flames and thick smoke billowing for hours despite a massive emergency response.
By late afternoon around 20 fire trucks and ambulances were still crowded around the building, where builders had been working on a nightclub in the basement.
A police cordon kept onlookers and traffic 100 metres (yards) away from the scorched facade, while an AFP reporter saw three exhausted firefighters sat on the ground with smoke-blackened faces and equipment.
The fire began at 12:47 (0947 GMT), the city governor’s office said, but it was only in the late afternoon that Davut Gul’s team announced the blaze was out.