Residents trapped in the burning Grenfell Tower made phone calls, sent messages and posted on social media calling for help and in some cases saying goodbye to their loved ones.

A mother of two on the 24th floor of the tower streamed footage on Facebook Live as smoke filled her flat and neighbours banged on doors asking for help. It is understood that the footage was shot by Rania Ibrham, 30. At one point a woman’s voice, can be heard shouting, “We’re stuck on the 23rd floor … There’s too many people stuck upstairs.”

Khadija Saye, a 24-year-old artist, posted a message on Facebook saying she and her mother, Mary, who lived on the 20th floor, were trapped. “Please pray for me, there’s a fire in my council block. I can’t leave the flat. Please pray for me and my mum,” she wrote.

Neighbours and relatives described panicked calls and messages from people trapped in the tower as the fire spread. A friend of Mohammed al-Haj Ali, 24, an engineering student who is believed to have died in the blaze, told the Guardian he had last spoken to him at around 3.30am. “He was saying, ‘Help me.’ He was saying, ‘Please help me. Please tell my family I love them.’ He sounded very scared.”



Anthony Disson, 65, called friends from the bathroom of his 22nd-floor flat. His son Lee, 47, said people told his dad to put a blanket around his head and get out, but he said the floor was too hot. “A friend then called him at 4am,” he said. “And one of the last things he said was: ‘Tell my sons that I love them.’ Nobody was able to contact him after that.”

The teenage daughter of Nadia Choucair, a teaching assistant, called a friend to tell her she loved her, saying she and her family were “not going to make it”, said a neighbour who gave her name as Hulya.

Some residents told worried loved ones they had been told to stay inside their homes. Hana Wahabi, 39, said she lost contact with her brother Aziz El Wahabi, his wife, Fouzia, and their three children, Nurhouda, Yassin and Mehdi, after speaking to them on the phone and telling them to leave.

“I rang him and the fire had not reached the top of the block at that point. He said he had been told to stay inside, stay in one room together and put towels under the door,” Wahabi said.

Ahmed Chellat, 60, had spoken to Fouzia El Wahabi, his sister-in-law. “I was on the phone to her saying, ‘Get out.’ But she said they had been told to stick towels under the door, stay inside and wait to be rescued,” he said. She said: ‘Smoke is coming under the doors,’ then I got cut off. That is the last time I heard from her.”

Nura Jamal, who lived on the 23rd floor and is feared to have died with her two sons, aged six and 11, called a friend at 2am and said: “Forgive me, the fire is here, I’m dying.”

The family of Steven Power, a father of five, said he was missing after he stayed to look after his bull terriers. He told relatives trying to make him leave the building: “I’m staying here with the dogs.”