House fire kills 8 family members in UAE

A state-owned newspaper in the United Arab Emirates is reporting that eight members of one Emirati family have been killed in a house fire in the country.

The Dubai government-owned Al-Bayan newspaper reported the fire struck early Tuesday in Baniyas, an area in Abu Dhabi.

The newspaper described the dead as including six children and two women. It quoted officials as blaming their deaths on suffocation from the fire’s smoke.

Authorities in Abu Dhabi did not immediately comment on the deaths.

The blaze comes after a similar fire killed seven children in the UAE sheikhdom of Fujairah in January. That prompted Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Dubai’s ruler and the UAE’s prime minister and vice president, to say the country would install fire alarms in all citizens’ homes.

source: UNB