General News of Monday, 17 June 2013

Source: Joy Online

Blazing Sunday: 3 babies burnt to death in separate outbreaks

A three-month-old baby has burnt to death in the latest fire outbreak that engulfed a wooden structure at the Odawna Market near the Kwame Nkrumah Circle in Accra on Sunday evening.

The boy was said to have been left to sleep in the candle lit structure while his mother went out to buy diapers.

Eyewitnesses said the fire started about 15 minutes after the woman had left, around 7:40pm.

Traders rushed to the scene and managed to douse the fire before personnel of the fire service got to the scene.

However, nobody, including the baby’s father who was part of those who doused the fire, knew he was lying inside the structure.

One of the eyewitnesses told Myjoyonline.com that it was too late when they finally realized the baby was in there. He added that the three-month-old boy was completely burnt.

His father collapsed and was rushed to the hospital and his mother who rushed to the scene upon hearing there was a fire outbreak absconded.

This is the fourth fire incident to have been recorded on Sunday alone.

Another fire at Nungua on Sunday claimed the life of a two-year-old boy. In Kumasi, scores of shops were razed to the ground at the central market when fire swept through it at dawn.

And a five-bedroom house situated at the plush Trassaco Valley residential community- estimated to cost a million dollars and with no fire extinguisher - was gutted by fire the same day.