Sharjah24 – Reuters: Britain's Duke and Duchess of Cambridge attended a vigil on Tuesday (June 14) in honour of 72 people who died in a tower block fire in London fire years ago.
The royals laid a wreath and spoke to survivors of the blaze that shook the nation and revealed widespread and fatal flaws in building regulations.
Seventy-two seconds of silence were held and green balloons were released in the sky in tribute to the victims.
British rapper Stormy, London's mayor Sadiq Khan and actor Tim Downie were also present at the event.
On June 14, 2017, Britain woke to the news of its deadliest fire in a residential building since World War Two, captured in images of a 23-storey inferno that have come to symbolise the tragedy of that night and a quest for justice for the local community and relatives of those who died.
Grenfell Tower, a social housing block in a wealthy west London borough, was destroyed in the fire, started by an electrical fault in a refrigerator. A combustible cladding system retro-fitted to the tower's external walls was the main factor in the unstoppable spread of the flames.
The disaster prompted a wave of soul-searching over whether neglect of an ethnically mixed, largely low-income community had played a part in the tower's fate.
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