LILLE (France): Five children between the ages of two and 10 died when a fire ravaged their home in northern France overnight while staying with their divorced father who was seriously burned trying to save them, officials said on Sunday.

In Saint-Quentin, a town about 130 kilometres northeast of Paris, a father who had his children for the weekend jumped out of a first-floor window to go to get help as flames engulfed his house. The father in his forties attempted to go back into the house with a neighbour but the two were helpless in the face of the massive flames.

“He never thought of himself. He tried to go get help. He burned himself trying to save his son,” said the neighbour Olivier Hubeaux.

Around 50 firefighters were dispatched to the fire, but struggled to get in the building due to the “violence” of the flames and the “nearly complete collapse of the first floor”, said firefighter Lieutenant Thierry Oberlin.

Masses of smoke also “seriously complicated the work of the firefighters” who found the five bodies of the children, “dead from asphyxiation”, said town official Jean-Jacques Boyer.

Autopsies will be carried out on the children on Monday.—AFP