Two people are feared to have died after a house fire tore through a property in the Grangetown area of Middlesbrough in the early hours of the morning, with police investigating a possible link to a gangland revenge attack following Saturday's fatal A66 crash. Armed police, paramedics, firefighters and gas engineers attended the scene on Birchington Avenue after the blaze broke out around 5am, destroying the roof of the house, though the building did not collapse; two people managed to escape while two others are missing, presumed dead.

Cleveland Fire Brigade said it was called at 5.23am and deployed six fire engines along with its Incident Command Unit, with road closures imposed around Birchington Avenue and Leighton Road. The fire comes days after a crash on the A66 killed two police officers, PC Matthew Blades and PC Tom Clough, along with five occupants of a Volkswagen Passat that had been travelling the wrong way down the dual carriageway during a police pursuit; 17 people have since been arrested in connection with that incident, which police believe was linked to an earlier attack on a house in Middlesbrough's Acklam area. Two GoFundMe pages set up for the officers' families have together raised over £1 million.