A 29-year-old woman and her three children – aged nine, five and 22 months – died on Wednesday in a house fire in Bradford, northern England, which police suspect was deliberately started.
A 39-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of murder in connection with the case. He himself suffered critical injuries and was taken to hospital.
Firefighters and police arrived at the scene of the fire shortly after 2 a.m. Tuesday night, but the woman was already dead, while two girls and a boy were taken to hospital. None of them survived. A man, believed to be the woman's partner and the children's father, was arrested at the scene.
“Although the investigation is in its early stages, we believe the fire was started deliberately and the incident was domestic in nature. Detectives from our Homicide and Major Investigations Team have launched a murder investigation,” Detective Superintendent Lucy Leadbeater of West Yorkshire Police said on Wednesday afternoon.
Main image source: Peter Byrne/Press Association/East News