Bikas Das / AP

Fire officials rescue a patient as he cries in a pain, from the window of a nursing home after it caught fire in Kolkata, India, Friday, Dec. 9, 2011.

Bikas Das / AP

A hospital staff member shouts for help after a fire broke out on Friday.

Bikas Das / AP

Fire officials and local people climb ladders to rescue patients trapped inside on Friday.

Bikas Das / AP

Fire officials rescue a patient from the window of a nursing home after it caught fire in Kolkata, India, Friday, Dec. 9, 2011.

Updated at 4:10 a.m. ET: The death toll has risen to at least 73, India's NDTV station reported. Click here for the latest updates.

msnbc.com staff and news services report:

KOLKATA, India -- At least 20 people are feared dead in a fire that struck a hospital in this eastern Indian city, officials said Friday.

Officials said at least 40 patients appeared to be trapped on upper floors after the fire broke out early Friday in the basement, the BBC reported. Rescuers were trying to reach them.

"Patients have suffocated on the fumes. Many have lost their lives," West Bengal Urban Development Minister Farhad Hakim told reporters, according to the BBC.

Many patients have been evacuated and moved to other hospitals, the BBC reported.

A correspondent at the scene told BBC radio that fire trucks were having a difficult time reaching the scene because of narrow streets around the hospital.

Read the full story here.

Dibyangshu Sarkar / AFP - Getty Images

An artisan works on semi-finished clay statues of Hindu deities in Kumartoli, the idol-makers' village of Kolkata, India, on August 22.

Dibyangshu Sarkar / AFP - Getty Images

An artisan at work in Kumartoli. Ongoing monsoon rain has made it difficult for the artisans to finish their idols on schedule, with the recent economic slowdown and high inflation adding to the difficulties of the idol-makers ahead of the festive season.

Dibyangshu Sarkar / AFP - Getty Images

Artisans work on clay statues of the Hindu goddess Durga.

Dibyangshu Sarkar / AFP - Getty Images

An artisan works on a statue of the Hindu goddess Durga.

AFP photographer Dibyangshu Sarkar paid a visit to Kumartoli, the village of the idol-makers in the Indian city of Kolkata.

Seeking to learn more about the craftsmen, I came across an interview with the Indian poet and novelist Sunil Gangopadhyay, who recalled his childhood in the 1940s:

In those days, instead of buying the idols from the market at Kumortuli, families invited the kumor or artisan home to stay as a house guest weeks before the Puja, during which time he sculpted the idol. The idol at our Puja was known for its magnificent size. It used to be over 10 feet tall. Every morning as the kumor started his work, we children gathered around him and gaped in awe as he gradually turned a fistful of straw and a huge mass of clay into a perfectly formed, larger-than-life figure. And then came the most intriguing part — the painting of the third eye of the Goddess. The artisan would sit in meditation sometimes for hours and then suddenly in one swift stroke of his paint brush, it would be done.

Bikas Das / AP

Two intoxicated men rest as it rains in Kolkata, India, Aug. 6.

 This almost looks like it could have been shot in New Orleans during Mardi Gras.

Piyal Adhikary / EPA

Commuters wade through water during a heavy rain shower in Kolkata, India on June 17. Monsoon rains enter India's mainland from the southern state of Kerala at the end of May or in the first week of June, and then progress to cover the rest of the country by July.

Piyal Adhikary / EPA

Rickshaw wallahs at work as monsoon rains fall in Kolkata on June 17.

Related content: India struggles to perfect art of monsoon forecasting.

Rupak De Chowdhuri / Reuters

A woman holds up her ink-stained finger after casting her vote outside a polling station during the sixth and final phase of voting in Lalgarh village in West Midnapore district in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal on May 10. The results for the month-long staggered election of the state will be known on May 13.

As we reported last month, elections in the Indian state of West Bengal could see a populist maverick unseat the world longest-serving, democratically elected communist government.

Piyal Adhikary / EPA

An elderly woman waits on the gate of her home next to a wall painted with symbols and slogans of the ruling Left Communist party of Bengal in Mukundapur village 35km east of Kolkata, on 22 March.

After 34 years of communist rule, federal Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee, a firebrand orator known as "Didi" or "elder sister," looks set to overthrow the communists blamed for leaving West Bengal and its capital Kolkata in a time-warp of Soviet era state control.

Bikas Das / AP

Indian Railway Minister and leader of the Trinamool Congress party Mamata Banerjee waits for the arrival of Indian Prime Minister and Congress party leader Manmohan Singh during an election campaign in Kolkata on April 23. The Congress party and Trinamool Congress party are allies in the ongoing six-phased elections for the state of West Bengal.

The results are expected to be announced on Friday. Tripti Lahiri of the Wall Street Journal blogged today on what a victory for Ms. Banerjee might mean for the state.