LAHORE, Feb 12: Four children of a family died of burns after a shanty caught fire in Q-Block of Sabzazar on Tuesday night.

Rescue 1122 fire-tenders and ambulances as well as Sabzazar police arrived at the scene after a ‘considerable’ time.

Sadar SP (Operations) Adeel Husain Chandio told Dawn that the blaze erupted in the shanty of Yaseen when his daughter was cooking food at around 8:30pm. He said the girl ran away in fear, but her four brothers and sisters who were asleep got trapped in flames. Their screams alerted neighbours and they alerted the police and Rescue 1122.

The children and valuables in the shanty were completely burnt due to delayed arrival of firefighters.

The SP said Yaseen and his wife were at their workplace at the time of the incident.

He said initial investigation showed that Yaseen had set up a shanty in a plot surrounded by houses. His daughter became nervous when the fire spread out of the mud stove and she ran outside instead of waking up her brothers and sisters. The victims were identified as one-and-a-half years old Qasim, Nagina (3), Farzana (8) and Asif (14).

Sources said the rescuers reached the scene from remote fire stations after 10 minutes, as large and congested localities of Sabzazar and Hanjarwal have no fire stations. They said the area from Maragzar Colony to Scheme Mor along Multan Road toward Motorway II was not covered by rescue authorities.

A Rescue 1122 spokesman said their fire vehicle and ambulance reached the scene from the Moon Market station in eight minutes. He went on to say that by the time rescuers reached the scene the fire had been extinguished and charred bodies had been retrieved from the ashes.