A father and two children die in a house fire in Ghent, and the mother survives by jumping out of a window |  outside

A father and two children die in a house fire in Ghent, and the mother survives by jumping out of a window | outside

with videoA fire in a terraced house in Ghent, Belgium, has claimed the lives of a 25-year-old father and his two children, aged 4 years and 9 months. He was still trying to save his children. The 21-year-old mother managed to jump out of the window and was injured and taken to hospital. She is out of danger.


foreign editors


The Ghent fire brigade received the emergency call about the fire around 11:30 am. The barracks is only 500 meters away, but when the fire brigade arrived the house was bursting with flames. According to the family’s neighbors, things went very quickly. We heard screams, we actually thought there was a fight. But then suddenly there was a bang on the ground floor and flames instantly shot out of the windows. The father ran upstairs to save the children.” There were reportedly two dogs in the house, and one of them was also said to have died.

The 21-year-old mother of the family managed to escape the fire by jumping out a window. Then she was immediately helped by some neighbours, including 26-year-old Mehmet Doğan. He is a baker and has his own shop next door. “The whole street was darkened by the fire, which was not normal,” he says. “When I went to have a look, I saw that woman sitting in front of the door in her pajamas. I asked her what she was doing there and she told me she couldn’t walk anymore. ‘My feet are broken, sir’… She was in complete shock.”

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Muhammad and two neighbors then carried the woman across the street. She was still conscious and told me her husband and two children were still inside. You really didn’t know how that happened.”

The cause of the fire is still unknown. The search is underway.

Police cordoned off the street after the fire. © Dylan Vermeulen

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