Rescue teams are continuing to search for people missing in the Cambodia casino fire as the death toll reached 19 people, officials said on Friday.

Footage shows the raging inferno in the early hours of Thursday morning at the Grand Diamond City Hotel and Casino in Poipet province on the border with Thailand.

Rescue crews from neighboring Thailand are helping with the operation.

Somboon Kwan-uam, from the Poh Teck Tung Foundation, said smoke levels in the corridors were now lower on Friday morning. They had earlier hampered rescue efforts with many victims dying from smoke inhalation - some even jumping from the building to escape the blaze.


It reportedly took more than six hours to bring it under control but at 6pm local time, the remnants of the fire were continuing inside the building.

Officials had cordoned off the area around the blackened ruins - still with smoke coming from them - and declared a no-entry zone amid evacuations.

A provisional police report said that 'around 10 people' - many of them reportedly Thai nationals - have been killed but the figure rose.

An estimated 400 people were inside the building when the fire broke out, with around 50 believed to have been trapped inside. Some 30 others were also reported injured.

The revellers were stranded on top of the building and jumped to their deaths.

Graphic footage was also taken showing people plunging from windows and the roof of the building to escape the flames.

The cause of the fire is still unclear and Cambodian officials are investigating.

Casinos are legal in Cambodia and popular with tourists from Thailand and China, where both countries ban gambling.

The country has never recovered from the brutal Communist genocide of the 1970s in which the Khmer Rouge slaughtered a third of the population, targeting educated adults.

Infrastructure and basic health and safety remain desperately undeveloped, with mass investment in projects such as rail, housing, casinos, entertainment, shopping malls and airports, only coming in recent years - ironically from genocidal Communist regime China.