Four children of one family were killed in a fire Tuesday evening in Kano.
The incident happened at a residential apartment in the densely populated Kurnar Asabe quarters.
Dateline gathered that their mother had gone to the market in popular Babban Layi when the fire started.
Residents who discovered that the building was on fire after sighting smoke billowing from the roof, tried to no avail to rescue the children.
Dateline gathered that the mother was used to locking the children up indoors whenever she wanted to go out after they were back from school.
The owner of the house, Abdulsamad Tajudeen, said the children had learnt to lock themselves in whenever the mother was not around.
“When the fire started around 4.30pm yesterday, other tenants on the ground floor were not aware there was fire upstairs until they realized that everywhere around them had gone dark.
“They initially thought it was going to rain, but when they ventured out of the room, they saw it was a fire, he said.
He said a large crowd gathered and tried unsuccessfully to break open the door and save the children.
“The children were apparently in the sitting room when they realized the house was on fire and withdrew into the bedroom where their remains were found after the flames had been put out,” he said.
In addition to the loss of lives, valuable items were destroyed by the inferno that gutted three apartments, Tajudeen said.
“Nobody can tell the actual cause of the fire,” he said, adding that the state fire service were able to put it out around 8pm.
“The fire was rekindled and we battled it until around 12 midnight,” he said.
Attempts to get the comment of the state fire service through it spokesperson, Saminu Yusuf Abdullahi, did not succeed as his mobile number could not be reached before going to press.
