By IANS
New Delhi : Five members of a family, including two minors, were suffocated to death when a fire broke out in a garments storehouse of east Delhi Sunday morning, the police said.
The accident occurred on the ground floor of a building in Kabir Nagar, Welcome locality around 6 a.m., said the police.
Three fire tenders were pressed into operations, and they had to struggle to make their way through narrow lanes to reach the spot located in the lower middle-class area, dominated mainly by a population of daily wager earners.
Five people – identified as Mohammed Raftar, 65, his wife Julekha, 60, and a 25-year-old Mehnaz and two children Ali Mushtaq, 1, and Afroz, 7, – who were sleeping on the first floor of the house, died due to asphyxiation.
The police said the victims were rushed to the Guru Tegh Bahadur Hospital (GTB), but they were declared brought dead, while nearly 10 other occupants were safely evacuated.
“The cause of the fire is yet to be ascertained, but preliminary investigations point towards short-circuit in electricity supply,” a police official said.