3 CHILDREN BURNT TO DEATH IN HOUSE

MPOLONJENI – Tragedy struck on Friday night at a Dlamini homestead in Mpolonjeni near Siteki, when three children were burnt to death after the house they were sleeping in caught fire.

The deceased children are: Zakhele Mtsetfwa (6), Bandzile Mohammed (3) and Nomile Tsabedze (18 months).
The minors were all by themselves in the stick and mud house when it caught fire before it was razed to the ground by the blaze, the family said.
According to the family, the mother of two of the children was attending a vigil at a neighbour’s home and had left the children asleep.
The cause of the fire is still unknown but community members believe that it may have been started by a candle.

However, the family said the mother of two of the deceased children had put out the candle light before she left.
“The eldest of the deceased children had a tendency of lighting a candle during the night, so it is possible that he may have lit the candle after his mother had left,” said a family member.
Meanwhile, the first person to arrive at the scene, Vusi Vilakati, said he was on his way to a local bakery to buy some muffins when he noticed that one of the houses at the Dlamini homestead was on fire.
Vilakati said at first, he thought it was the vegetation around the homestead that was burning but when he came closer to assess the situation, he discovered that it was infact one of the houses that was burning.

“As I was moving around the yard, trying to find something I could use to put out the fire, it never crossed my mind that there could be children inside the burning house. This was because there were no screams coming from the house,” said Vilakati.
He said while he was outside the house, the mother of two of the deceased children arrived and informed him that three children were inside the burning house.
Vilakati said he frantically called other community members to come and assist him in retrieving  out the children from the house which, by then, was wholly engulfed in flames.
“We only managed to get one child out of the house but unfortunately, he was already dead. The other two were retrieved by personnel from the Fire and Emergency Services,” he stated.
Vilakati added that the children may have managed to escape from the fire but they couldn’t because the door was locked.

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