Last updated at 10:12 06 February 2008

The uncle of the baby thrown from a blazing building in Germany has spoken of the "life or death" decision he took to save the boy.

Kamil Kaplan, 32, was photographed throwing his nephew Onur Calar 40 feet from a third-floor window as he and his sisters and brother-in-law were trapped in Ludwigshafen.

He said when he saw a policeman below he thought it was eight-month-old Onur's last chance to live. "I saw the cop with his arms outstretched holding his jacket like a safety net.

I looked him in the eyes and he looked at me as if to say 'go for it.' I kissed Onur one last time and then I let him fall." The officer caught Onur, who was unharmed.

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Mr Kaplan and his daughter escaped by a ladder but his mother, Onur's two-year-old brother Ilyas, and two cousins were among nine Turkish people killed in the suspected racist arson attack on Sunday.

Yesterday, the eight-month-old was being looked after by his uncle Erdal Calar while his parents recovered in hospital from the suspected-arson attack on Sunday.

A family friend said: "Onur thought it was just a game. The worst is yet to come for him."

A passer-by took the extraordinary picture of the tiny child being thrown from the third-floor window.

The baby hurtled through billowing smoke to land safely in the arms of a policeman 40ft below.

Her parents took their desperate gamble as flames tore through a block of flats in the southern German town of Ludwigshafen.

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A further 60 people were injured in the blaze. Two more children survived by huddling behind a sofa.

Police are investigating whether the disaster was an arson attack by neo-Nazis, as most of the families in the building were Turkish.

There was a similar blaze at a refugee hostel in the town eight years ago.

As well as the 52 residents, the four-storey block was packed with friends and relatives watching a street festival on Sunday afternoon.

The blaze broke out on the first floor and fire officials said the wooden stairs acted like a chimney, drawing flames upwards.

"It would have been like a blast furnace," said one.

Web designer Rene Werse, 43, who took the picture of the falling boy, said: "I saw things that I shall never forget. There were people on their balconies and at their windows, screaming to get out. It was hell."

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