Twenty-one people were rescued as over 100 firefighters tackled a blaze in the centre of St Leonards on Saturday morning.

Flames ripped through Warrior House, a former hotel which has been converted into flats.

The fire started at just before 3.30am in a ground floor flat of the four-storey building on a corner of Warrior Square.

It quickly spread through the ground floor and the entrance hall, blocking the occupants' exit.

Fire fighters arrived to hear people shouting for help from upstairs windows.

They used turntable ladders with rescue baskets to rescue some of those trapped on the floors above.

Residents rang intercoms to warn the flat owners that the building was on fire and banged on doors to wake others up.

Later the same morning the disused Winston Manor Hotel in Beacon Road, Crowborough, went up in flames.

Eighty firefighters attended the scene and fire engines had to be brought in from Kent because so many of East Sussex personnel were at the St Leonards blaze.

The A26 through Crowborough was closed for much of Saturday.