Monitoring Desk
PARIS: At least eight people, including a mother and her seven children, were burnt to death after a faulty dryer set their house on fire on Monday in Charly-sur-Marne town of France, authorities said.
The raging fire, the deadliest blaze involving children in France in a decade, broke out soon after midnight in the home of the ill-fated family in the Charly-sur-Marne town, some 50 miles (80 kilometers) east of Paris in the Champagne area.
The mother and her seven children suffocated from black smoke that filled their house as they were trapped in the attic, a local prosecutor Julien Morino-Ros said.
The fire’s origin appeared to have been a malfunctioning clothes dryer on the house’s ground floor, he said.
France fire incident
Neighbours informed the fire department about the fire just before 1:00 am (0000 GMT).
They said the woman’s husband, the father of three children, was seriously burned and transferred to a hospital.
The children included two boys and five girls. Four of the children were from a previous relationship of the mother.
The father appears to have attempted to extinguish the fire and told his children and wife to seek refuge from the blaze in their converted attic on the second floor.
While more and more smoke rose through the staircase, firefighters were facing trouble getting ladders to the house’s top windows, which is nestled in a narrow street in the center of the village of 2,600 inhabitants.
He said that the house’s electric window shutters were blocked due to a power outage triggered by the faulty dryer, further hampering the rescue effort.
