Hundreds missing after fire engulfs Hong Kong tower blocks
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 27 November 2025
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Emergency teams in Hong Kong are still working to extinguish fires at a giant housing complex a day after the blaze broke out. Sixty- five people have now been confirmed dead. Over two hundred are still missing.
Also in the programme: Hamas has urged mediators to pressure Israel to grant safe passage for dozens of its fighters holed up in tunnels in southern Gaza; the Australian fifteen year-olds taking their government to court over its social media ban for kids; and John Lennon's son on why his father's political activism still hits home today.
(Photo: One 51-year-old resident - with the surname Wan - tells Reuters she bought her apartment in Wang Fuk Court over 20 years ago. Credit: Reuters)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:09.2 | Hello and welcome to NewsHour. It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service |
| 0:13.4 | Studios in central London. I'm Tim Franks. In a moment we'll hear the latest from Hong Kong, |
| 0:18.7 | where the fire that engulfed multiple high-rise blocks has killed, we now know, more than 60 people. |
| 0:24.6 | It's our top story today. |
| 0:26.5 | Also on the programme, our correspondent in southern Lebanon, as the shaky ceasefire between |
| 0:30.8 | Israel and Hezbollah marks its first anniversary. |
| 0:34.4 | And we have an exclusive interview with Sean Ono Lennon, the youngest son of John Lennon, |
| 0:40.7 | on the power of his parents' activism more than 40 years after his father was assassinated. |
| 0:46.1 | Part of the miracle of my dad and mom's careers as activist is the positivity. |
| 0:53.8 | There's a message to be learned about how peace and love |
| 0:58.1 | and tolerance for our fellow humans is a missing element of today's political discourse. |
| 1:08.6 | That interview coming up in 20 minutes. We're beginning though in Hong Kong where |
| 1:13.8 | still the flames have not fully been tamped. Firefighters have, according to the Territory's chief |
| 1:19.4 | executive, brought the blazes under control, but no more than that. And so the fear remains that |
| 1:25.3 | the death toll could yet rise. Already 65 people are known to have died |
| 1:31.0 | when fire tore through a giant housing complex. More than 200 remain missing. It was over 24 hours ago |
| 1:38.8 | that the blaze took hold. This was a video that the BBC has verified came from the very start of the fire. |
| 1:45.7 | You can hear a man shouting fires reach the fourth floor. Get out, get out. There's a pause. And then |
| 1:59.2 | the sound of other panicked shouting, |
| 2:01.7 | and you can hear him saying it's reached the eighth floor. He swears and says, |
| 2:05.4 | we need to get back. I can't handle it anymore. In the video clip, you can see just to the |
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