At least 31 people are believed to have been seriously injured after a fire broke out in an apartment block in New York.

Witnesses claimed to have seen residents jumping from the 19-storey building after the blaze broke out on Sunday morning.

The blaze is believed to have started in a duplex apartment on the second and third floors and did not spread to other flats, with most of the injuries believed to have been caused by smoke spreading throughout the building.

It took the efforts of 200 firefighters to bring the fire under control and save the victims from a potentially horrific fate, the fire department said.

One first responder was seen cradling a baby as he stepped out of a window onto a fire engine’s crane.

Pictures of the victims, which are not being published to protect their privacy, show a boy of around eight years old being fed oxygen through a mask while he lay limp on a stretcher.

Others show a woman hunched on the floor with her face almost entirely covered in soot.

The Fire Department of New York described the incident as a five-alarm fire, the most severe category.

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