Three children lost their lives after a fire broke out in their house on Tuesday evening at Elburgon town in Nakuru County.
The children, two girls and a boy aged 6, 5 and 4 years were alone in the house when the incident occurred.
Their father had gone to buy charcoal from a nearby shop and had left a charcoal jiko burning in one of the rooms.
The father said that he was called by one of his neighbors who informed him that his house was on fire.
“I hurriedly came back home and found neighbors fighting the fire,” said the distraught father.
He also said that he had left his children asleep when he went out to buy milk. The man has been living alone with his children after separating with his wife in 2019.
Locals revealed that the children would sometimes stay alone at night in since their father worked at night guard in of the filling stations in Elburgon town.
According to the Molo Sub County police boss Mwenda Mutamia, the fire started at around 6:30pm shortly after the children’s father left the house.
Mutamia who arrived at the scene in company of a team from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations, said the cause of the fire could not be established immediately.
The bodies of the victims were moved to Elburgon Hospital.
This comes just weeks after another house fire claimed lives of five family members in Mashuru area of Kajiado county.
Three children, their mother, and a domestic worker were among those killed in the fire. The man of the house, Saitoti Maina, was out of the house at the time of the incident.
According to the area assistant chief Jonathan Sikongei, the fire was likely triggered by an electric short-circuit.
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