Five children of the same family died from inhaling fumes after a fire broke out in a house in the Dagranwala area of Chiniot district on Wednesday.
The children of Muhammad Jaffar, five-year-old Abu Bakar, four-year-old Chand Ali and 10-year-old Bushra Bibi, as well as the daughters of his brother Maqsood Ahmad, three-year-old Amina and Sidra were playing on the street. They later went into the house to roast corn, where a fire broke out.
“My brother Jaffar and I along with other members of the family had gone to nearby fields for wheat harvesting,” a distraught Maqsood Ahmad told the police.
He said that he saw smoke rising from the direction of his house while he was in the fields, which caused him to panic and immediately rush towards his house. “I threw buckets of water as soon as I reached the scene but was not successful. When I saw the children, they were unconscious.”
He said that Rescue 1122 officials came to the scene and rushed the children to the District Headquarters Hospital, where doctors pronounced them dead.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 1st, 2014.