MADINAH: Seven children were killed in a fire that blazed through a house in Madinah Saturday night.
“Our rescue teams rushed to the house on fire in the western part of Madinah city and tried their best to save the family trapped inside the house," spokesman of Madinah Civil Defense Col. Khaled Al-Johani said.
"Braving raging flames, our special rescue workers entered the house and brought out 11 people with severe burns. They rushed them to a nearby hospital.
"However, seven of the badly burned people died shortly after their arrival in hospital,” Al-Johani said.
The special style of construction of the old house did not permit the smoke to dissipate, causing it to fatally thicken inside the house in which 11 members of a family were living, Al-Johani said.
Burning bedding and other furniture made of flammable substances made the situation worse, he added.
In another development, 521 children were moved to safer locations from two schools in Makkah following fire accidents on Saturday. The first fire appeared in a kindergarten at the Shawqiya Plot following an electrical short circuit. In a short time, Civil Defense evacuated residents from the building, where 171 children were studying and 38 staff members working. The second fire accident was at an electricity station close to Al-Qaqa bin Omar School in the Jabal Noor district. All the children were sent home for fear that the fire might spread to the school and other neighboring buildings.
No one was injured in either accident, a Civil Defense source said in a statement.
Meanwhile, the Madinah Civil Defense has appealed to citizens and residents for information on an elderly man who went missing in Jeddah while reportedly on his way to Madinah. The septuagenarian disappeared from a Jeddah house more than a month ago.
Some shepherds in the Khakh village informed police that they spotted the man at a desert location in the east of the Hijra Road going in the direction of Madinah a few days ago.
Civil Defense sent a search team supported by a helicopter to the location, but had not found him at the time of going to the press.
Seven children die in Madinah house fire
