noida

Updated: Feb 01, 2019 10:22 IST

A 27-year-old pregnant woman managed to save her four children before being killed in a house collapse triggered by a fire in Ghaziabad on Thursday.

Fatima, whose family said she was eight months pregnant, saved her children by throwing them from the balcony on to the street below, locals said.

However, she fainted before she could escape the building, which collapsed soon after.

The police said they suspect the building collapsed due to a fire in a bakery, operated by Fatima’s husband from the ground floor of their house, triggered explosions in two LPG cylinders around 12.30pm.

“Fatima was trapped on the first floor of the house, while her husband and his brothers were trying to douse the fire on the ground floor. Her husband said she couldn’t move swiftly as she was in the advanced stages of her pregnancy. Locals asked Fatima to throw her children down on to the street. She threw all her children into the waiting arms of rescuers one by one,” Naseem Saifi, a neighbour, said.

Her two older children, a nine-year-old boy and a seven-year-old girl, sustained severe injuries while her two other daughters escaped with minor injuries, locals said. p2