Bartamaha --A teenager has described how she woke up to the sound of screaming yesterday morning as a blaze ripped through a room next to hers in Mitchell’s Plain, killing three younger relatives.

Bishara Ali, 16, was asleep in the front room of the Somali family’s three-bedroomed house when the fire started just before 8am.

Thirteen people – all family members – were sleeping in the house in Eastridge at the time. Safaa, 11, Abduragmaan, nine, and Hassan, five, were killed.

“My sister Anab was shouting something about turning the electricity off, and there was a mattress on fire on the floor of the sitting room,” Ali said. “I followed two of my nephews outside to call for help, and saw smoke, thick and dark, coming from the window of the middle room.”

Five children and an adult cousin, Iqra Ali, 20, were asleep in the room, which had two bunk beds.

According to Bishara Ali, the fire began in one of two mattresses on a top bunk.

“Iqra was sleeping there, and woke up when she smelt smoke.

“She carried the burning mattress into the sitting room without realising the second mattress had also caught fire.”

While family members tried to extinguish the mattress in the lounge, the fire spread through the bedroom.

Bishara Ali called their father, Mohammed, at 8.07am from her cellphone. He was opening his tuck shop across the road.

“I’m asthmatic, I couldn’t get anywhere near that smoke. I said to him: ‘I don’t know who’s alive and who’s dead, but something is wrong in that room, please come.’”

Neighbours, alerted by the screams, came running with rocks and buckets of water.

Norman Bailey, 51, a tradesman, used a slab of concrete to break burglar bars that had trapped the children inside. He pulled two children, Maryam Ali, 12, and Shurkri Al, 18, through the window, but could not save the other three.

When the fire had been extinguished, Bishara had returned to the room.

“I could see that Abduragmaan and Safaa were hugging, but they looked like ash. Hassan had crawled under the bed. The children’s father couldn’t handle it, he just ran.”

Anab, the mother of the dead children, is four months pregnant. Her other two children – Fatima and Hussain – were in another room and escaped the blaze, but were treated for smoke inhalation at Mitchell’s Plain Day Hospital.

Cape Town Fire Services spokesperson Theo Layne said officials were still investigating the cause of the fire, but suspected the children had been playing with matches.

Neighbour Maria Duncan, 52, was “very proud” of the way the community came together to help the family and said they put the fire out “long” before firemen arrived.

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Source:- Cape Times

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