A fire broke out Saturday morning in a house in Comines. A family of seven occupied the premises. Two young girls aged 10 and 12 died, confirmed at 2:00 p.m. the Tournai-Mons prosecutor’s office.
The emergency services of Picardy Wallonia were alerted on Saturday morning, at 8:21 a.m., that a sad fire had broken out in a row house on rue Duribreu in Bizet, in the entity of Comines-Warneton. Coming from the barracks of Mouscron and Comines, two fire engines, a ladder truck and two ambulances were dispatched to the scene. Rescuers from France and Flanders also intervened at the scene of the tragedy.
When the first firefighters arrived, the house was already ablaze. “This house was occupied by seven people, two adults and five children of various ages. Two girls, aged 10 and 12, were found upstairs by the emergency services. These children had died”, specified around 2:00 p.m. Céline Carette, deputy public prosecutor of Tournai-Mons.
According to the magistrate, the parents of the victims and the three other children, the eldest, were able to get out of the fire. “The parents did not want to be admitted to a hospital and wanted to stay there, given the situation. We do not know for the moment the origin of this fire which started in the body of the house, then spread to the floor and the attic. I have appointed an expert to determine the causes of this fire as well as the PJF laboratory in Tournai-Mons,” she explains.
Investigators’ investigations should make it possible to determine whether the fire was accidental or otherwise.