The family of two Iranian sisters who are presumed to have died in the fire at Grenfell Tower have spoken of their grief amid uncertainty over whether the Home Office will grant visas for relatives to attend their funeral.

The sisters, Sakineh and Fatemeh Afrasiabi, lived on the 18th floor of the tower block despite the former being disabled and only able to move with a walking frame. Sakineh’s children told the Guardian that she was rehoused in Grenfell last year after her requests for an accessible flat fell on deaf ears.



Her daughter, Nazanin Aklani, sobbed as she told the Guardian that her mother had previously been denied a ground floor flat: “She was forced to live there because she had no other option. On a good day she couldn’t come down 18 floors – but in the fire and smoke?”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nazanin Aklani, daughter of Sakineh Afrasiabi, says her mother was housed on the 18th floor of Grenfell Tower even though she was ‘almost housebound’. Photograph: Handout

While Sakineh’s children live in the UK, Fatemeh’s five children are in Iran, and her daughter, who was denied a family visitor’s visa in March, has so far been unable to come to the UK despite losing her mother in the fire. The family says that both the Home Office and the British embassy in Tehran have been unhelpful. Aklani has launched an online petition which has so far been signed by more than 2,000 people calling on the UK authorities to grant her aunt’s family visas “to allow her children to be present in her funeral, grieve and say goodbye to their mother”.



Aklani said her mother, who had arthritis and diabetes and “was almost housebound”, moved to the UK in 1997 and lived in the second floor of a property in Ladbroke Grove before being rehoused in Grenfell Tower.



“My mum shouldn’t have been housed there on 18th floor. They knew that if anything happened, my mum would not be able to escape. We had an earlier bid for a flat on ground floor which had one step and the council would say, ‘It’s not step-free, it’s not suitable for your mum,’ but when we bid for this place, nobody wanted to go there, they said, ‘This one is fit,’” she said.



Nazanin’s brother, Shahrokh, a 48-year-old taxi driver, was on the phone to his aunt, Fatemeh, as the fire spread to upper floors. “She said, ‘We’ve come to the 23rd floor, flat 205.’ An Afghan family lived there and because my mum is disabled, the Afghan guy helped to bring my mum from the 18th floor to the 23rd floor in his own house to put them away from fire,” he said.

Shahrokh’s aunt and mother were together as the fire raged, and his aunt pleaded with him to get them help: “She asked what happened, ‘Why aren’t they sending helicopters to rescue us?’. I tried to stay in touch with my aunt and then in the last minutes she was quiet, her breaths could be numbered, and the phone disconnected.”

Shahrokh Aghlani blamed the government for “cutting costs, cutting costs, cutting costs” and neglecting the building’s fire safety system. “There wasn’t even a fire extinguisher there. I’m a taxi driver in London. If I don’t have a fire extinguisher in my car, they wouldn’t give me a licence. How come they would allow a building without sprinklers or fire extinguishers?” he asked.

Nazanin Aklani expressed dismay at the lack of support shown to her family by liaison officers. “Everything is very vague. It’s a great lack of information,” she said. “We’re waiting for their remains to be brought out, to bury them. It’s so difficult to believe that they’ve burnt in fire, that they’ve turned into ashes. I’ve asked the liaison officer to update us how many floors they’ve searched so at least we know how long to wait, but there’s no information,” she said.

“The only information in the news is about those who are waiting to be rehoused. At least they have their lives. Nobody cares about the families of those who have lost their lives. We need closure.”