A large fire swept through a shanty town near the port area of Manila in the Philippines om Sunday night, destroying about 1,000 homes and leaving more than 8,000 people homeless.

About 1,000 homes have been reduced to wreckage and ashes after fire ripped through a slum area of the Philippine capital Manila.

A fire has torn through a coastal town in the Philippine capital, destroying a thousand homes and sending smoke billowing into the sky.

Manila firefighters had difficulty reaching the incident as the streets are narrow and terminal walls were high.

The fire spread rapidly through makeshift homes in Manila’s Tondo district, an official said, displacing 1,000 families. “It’s like you lit up a box of matches.”

Firemen tackled a huge fire that ripped through hundreds of slum homes in the Philippine capital Manila on Sunday. Footage shows a Philippine Air Force helicopter dumping water over the raging inferno in Isla Puting Bato - a squatter settlement that sits next to the heavily polluted Manila Bay - on.