LAHORE: A baby girl died from burns, while her two minor siblings were injured in a fire erupting in a house at Khokhar Chowk near Sanda here on Wednesday.

The four-month-old Fajar, daughter of a labourer, Amir Ali, succumbed to her burns, while her siblings -- six-year-old Abdullah and three-year-old Ansa -- were injured andshifted to hospital for treatment.

A police official said the fire erupted when the three children were alone in a room of the house. He said initial inquiries showed that one of the children threw a piece of cloth on a burning gas heater that instantly caught fire.

The blaze, he said, swiftly engulfed the room due to leakage in the gas pipe, leaving all three children injured. He added that as six-month-old Fajar was unable to move, she suffered critical burns and died on the spot.

Their mother, who was busy in household chores in an adjoining room, on seeing flames leaping from the room called neighbours for help. The locals also called Rescue 1122 and the police.

The Rescue 1122 teams reaching the spot extinguished the fire and shifted the injured children to hospital, where doctors declared one of them (Fajar) ‘received dead’. The police have launched further investigations into the incident.

Published in Dawn, January 27th, 2022