LAHORE: Three minor sisters were burnt alive, while their infant brother suffered critical burns when a fire erupted in their single-room house on Sawaminagar Road in Misri Shah area on Wednesday.

The children -- three minor girls and an infant -- were allegedly left unattended in the house that their parents locked before going out around 10am, when the fire broke out.

Some neighbours, on seeing smoke and flames rising from the house, alerted the Rescue 1122 Emergency Service.

The Rescue 1122 firefighters arrived at the spot, extinguished the fire and pulled the children out of the house. They were shifted to the Mayo Hospital, where the doctors pronounced two-year-old Tayyba and three and a half years old Esha dead. The eldest sister Saba, 9, also succumbed to her burns after some hours, while the three-week old Ali Hamza was said to be in a critical condition.

A medical officer at the hospital’s emergency ward said the two younger sisters were brought dead at the hospital after suffering more than 70 per cent burns. The infant was being treated in the intensive care unit (ICU), he added.

A Rescue official, on condition of anonymity, told Dawn that the couple apparently forgot to switch off the gas heater they were using to keep the room warm, which might have caused the fire.

He said a TV set and a bed were also gutted in the fire.

Misri Shah police station SHO Inspector Muhammad Ishfaq also said in the light of initial investigation that the fire might have erupted after the couple left a gas heater burning in the room.

Published in Dawn, January 19th, 2017