Four Syrian children die in tent fire on Amman farm

AMMAN — Four Syrian refugee children, siblings from the same family between the ages of six months and 10 years, died in a fire that engulfed their tent in Amman on Saturday, official sources said.

The four siblings — aged six months, two, eight and 10 years — were sleeping in their tent on a farm near the Airport Road when the fire broke out, Police Spokesperson Colonel Amer Sartawi said.

The Civil Defence Department was called to extinguish the fire and four charred bodies were recovered from the scene, Sartawi told The Jordan Times.

Sartawi said a committee was formed to investigate the cause of the fire.

Meanwhile, a second official source told The Jordan Times that the fire was triggered "most probably by an electrical failure".

"The victims' parents left early to work and it seems that a device or a wire that supports the tent with electricity malfunctioned and caused the fire," the second source said.

An autopsy conducted by a team including Director of the National Institute of Forensic Medicine (NIFM) Adnan Abbas concluded that the children died from burns, a senior medical source said.

The medical source told The Jordan Times that the forensic experts sent blood and tissue samples to the criminal lab for a toxicology examination.

"Foul play is ruled out for the time being, and it seems the deaths were accidental," the medical source said.

The medical source added that the NIFM received official papers from the authorities indicating that the victims were Syrian refugees "who are registered with UNRWA".