Several people have died after a huge fire engulfed a west London tower block overnight.

Notting Dale ward councillor Judith Blakeman, who lives across the road from Grenfell Tower, said it had between 400 and 600 people living in it.

BBC Newsnight

Resident Sajad Jamalvatan was out when the fire started. His mother escaped.

He rushed back to the scene and tells us he saw a body fall from the 16th or 17th floor.

London Fire Brigade Commissioner Dany Cotton says the cause of the fire is not yet known.

The Met Police are asking people to update the Casualty Bureau when people they reported as missing are found safe.

Eyewitnesses describe seeing people jumping out of Grenfell Tower.

NHS England is asking Londoners to use its services "wisely" and, if they need medical attention, to "seek advice from NHS 111 in the first instance".

Tim Stokes
in North Kensington

Walking through the streets surrounding Greenfell tower, it could be any other hot summer day. Parents calmly walk their children to school, people sit outside on benches in the sun.

But in the background a column of smoke rises into the crisp blue sky.

In the air there is a constant thudding of a police helicopter and the occasional stench of smoke carried by the wind.

At points in the road, reporters are bunched together with members of the public, all watching the scolded shards of the tower burn.

At times wisps of black debris are lifted into the air and there are embers are still visibly burning in some windows.

Outside front doors people discuss with their neighbours and on mobile phones what they heard and saw.

"I'm shell shocked," one woman says to her neighbour.

"I was woken at two. It looked like the tower in inferno," another says.

Image source, Getty Images

London mayor Mr Khan said the first fire engine was at the tower block within six minutes and describes the London Fire Brigade as the "best fire service in the world".

Referring to the possible cause of the blaze, he added: "Of course, many many people will have legitimate questions that will demand answers."

The BBC's Wyre Davis, at the scene, reports that the fire has taken hold again "with a vengeance right in the middle of the tower block".

He says it's a spot where the firefighters can't easily focus their hoses. Debris continues to fall and black smoke is once again billowing out of Grenfell Tower.

Despite earlier reassurances by London Fire Brigade chief Dany Cotton, the BBC correspondent believes "there must be concerns about the integrity of the building itself".

Cerys Matthews, who can see Grenfell Tower from her home and knows many residents, described the scene this morning as the blaze continued.

London mayor Sadiq Khan has also been speaking about the Grenfell Tower fire.

He said: "The good news is some progress has been made to go higher up the building. The structural experts who are there are currently saying the building is safe.

"Our focus now is search and rescue although it will move to, I'm afraid, recovery.

"And of course we've got to make sure in the meantime we provide shelter to those who's had to flee their homes, and the neighbouring properties."

Image source, PA

Extraordinary stories are emerging of individuals who helped save those trapped in the tower - including one member of the public who caught a baby thrown from the ninth or 10th floor.

Witness Samira Lamrani told the Press Association: "People were starting to appear at the windows, frantically banging and screaming.

"The windows were slightly ajar, a woman was gesturing that she was about to throw her baby and if somebody could catch her baby.

"Somebody did, a gentleman ran forward and managed to grab the baby."

She added: "I could see people from all angles, banging and screaming for help.

"Us members of the public were reassuring them, telling them we've done what we can and that we've phoned 999, but obviously the look on their face was death.

"My daughter's friend said she observed an adult who made some sort of homemade parachute and tried to lower himself out of the window.

"The more I looked up, floor upon floor. Endless numbers of people. Mainly the kids, because obviously their voices, with their high pitched voices - that will remain with me for a long time.

"I could hear them screaming for their lives."

Image source, EPA

Firefighters speaking off the record here say they can't imagine seeing anything like the scope and shape of this again, says the BBC's Claire Heald, who is at the scene.

"They talk about being in the building, using what they think was a single staircase.

"They say a person was pulled out seven hours after the blaze began. From a floor above where it's thought it started."

An investigation will come in time no doubt, but they say windows were open, curtains billowing, and the fire travelled along the wood cladding shell.

Drawn from across the capital, they are scathing about cuts, past and planned, to the service.

"Egg rolls, cheese rolls, bags of rolls."

Liz O'Leary at the Embassy Cafe has been sending supplies down to police and fire crews here since dawn, reports BBC News's Claire Heald.

The nearby St Clement's Centre is operating as an emergency refuge. People are spontaneously arriving with community donations, akin to the aftermath of the Manchester attacks.

Big bottles of water are being hefted inside.

There, evacuated families are waiting, people are leaving names of the loved ones they seek on a list.

The helicopter still roars overhead. On the ground people are doing whatever they can to help.

Staff at St Clement's Church in Sirdar Road, Kensington have told the BBC's Sophie Woodcock that a number of disaster emergency centres have opened up in the north Kensington area.

Apart from St Clement's Church, these are the Rugby Portobello Trust in Walmer Road, and the Latimer Centre in Freston Road.

They are accepting donations of provisions such as food, drinks, clothes and toiletries.

St Clement's Church is currently closed to donations apart from baby clothes and nappies as they have had so many already this morning.

GoFundMe, the crowdfunding platform, says an appeal fund has been set up by a local councillor, aiming to raise £20,000.

BBC reporter Michael Cowan also found a local woman doing her bit to fundraise with a bucket on the street this morning.

BBC Radio 5 live

Grenfell Tower resident Paul Munakr, who was asleep on the seventh floor at the time, said the fire alarms in the building had not gone off.

"I was fast asleep," he said. "It was only by the sound of people screaming: 'Don't jump, dont jump off the building" - which I assume people must've been doing to escape the fire - that's the only reason I woke up."

Mr Munakr said he escaped down the fire emergency stairs as "black smoke was coming towards [his] face".

Richarn Elcock lives in Grenfell Tower and says his mother and five-year-old sister were in the tower for five hours in their 11th-floor flat.

"The fire brigade told them to wait. My mum was panicking and I was panicking. She eventually got out and got taken to hospital shortly after.

"She opened the door and she said she had to step over a dead body to get out."