JEDDAH, 21 March 2006 — Three children, including a three-year-old baby, were killed in a fire that gutted a residential flat in the Hera district in the north of Jeddah on Sunday, an Arabic newspaper reported yesterday.
The killer fire reportedly started by an electrical short circuit while the children’s Palestinian parents had gone out on some urgent errand leaving Mutasim, 3, Muadh, 5, and Magdolin, 6, playing at home, according to Al-Madinah daily.
It was only when the billowing smoke began to envelop the area and the flames licked up to the adjoining flats that the neighbors remembered the three children whose shouts for help could have been drowned in the sound and fury of the spreading fire, the paper said.
The firefighters of the local civil defense unit braved the flames and went inside looking for the kids. It was, unfortunately, too late; emergency officials retrieved three charred bodies.
Unable to withstand the sight, the traumatized parents had to be taken to a hospital in the neighborhood.
