Fire incidents: Three children hospitalised with burns

Two siblings in critical condition.

RAHIM YAR KHAN/DG KHAN:

Three children were injured in two incidents on Monday. 

Two siblings were burned in a fire at Mohammad Mansha’s house in Oadh Colony. Rescue officials said the fire was started by a candle.

He said Mansha and his wife had left for a wedding ceremony and left burning a candle in the room, where their two children, Usman, 1, and Shazia, 3, were asleep. Asghar, a neighbour, said he noticed smoke coming out from one of the windows of the house. When he went to check it, he said, he heard the children crying.

He said he gathered a few men from the neighbourhood and tried to pick the lock. He also called the Rescue team, who eventually pulled the children and took them to Shaikh Zayed Hospital.

Doctors treating the children said the children had 40 per cent burns, and were in a critical condition.

It took two hours to put out the fire.

Mansha said his daughter’s wedding was scheduled in a few weeks. Dowry items for her wedding were destroyed, he said.

In another incident, an eight-year-old was burned while playing with fire with some children outside his house in Dera Ghazi Khan. Rescue officials said that Dilshad, a resident of Siddiquabad Colony, and some other children were playing with fireworks. They said one of them threw a lit match stick at Dilshad whose clothes caught fire. The children ran away, leaving Dilshad behind.

Some passers-by put out the fire and took the child to district headquarters hospital in a Rescue ambulance. The child was later taken to a trauma centre, where doctors treating him said he would likely survive.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 3^rd, 2012.