East St Louis, Illinois: Five younger children from 10 left at home without adults died of a fire in early Friday in an apartment building in southwest Illinois, officials said.
The firefight crew was called to the building in the eastern St Louis before 3am and reported finding two dead children in the room.
Three other children fainted on the kitchen floor, officials said, and two of them were said dead once they were taken outside, according to the Head of the Eastern St Louis Fire Extinguisher George McClellan.
The fifth child was taken to the hospital and then died.
Children ranges from ages 2 to 9 years and all come from the same family.
Their name was not immediately released.
“People took it very hard,” McClellan told reporters from his firefighters.
The mother of children had left home to take other adults from the office and return to find a burning building, McClellan said.
He entered the building several times in the building Efforts to save children, he said.
The cause of the fire in St.
Louis Timur, which is located across the Mississippi River from St.
Louis, Missouri, is being investigated.
Seven other families were transferred by fire, officials said, but they were not home when the fire broke out.