Toddler killed in East Jerusalem fire

A 3-year old girl was killed and her brother and parents were injured when a fire swept through their apartment in East Jerusalem after a gas tank exploded Tuesday.

The girl’s brother, 5, and their mother, 24, were also seriously injured in the fire, and their father, 50, was moderately hurt.

The blaze broke out in the neighborhood of Silwan, which abuts the Old City.

The girl was rushed to a local hospital in critical condition after being pulled from the fire Tuesday morning, but doctors were unable to revive her.

The fire apparently began when the children were playing with a lighter, according to Israel Radio. The fire spread through the apartment, setting off the gas tank and engulfing the home.

“I heard the little kids downstairs screaming,” a neighbor told the Ynet news outlet. “I went outside to see what was happening. There was a crowd and they said the house was on fire. The father came down first. He was black from the soot. After that they took out the mother and then the kids.”

Most of the Silwan neighborhood is Palestinian, though a number of Jewish families and groups also have properties there.

A gas tank explosion in the Jewish East Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo in January 2014 left four people dead, including a baby, and 11 more injured.

In May, a Palestinian man was sentenced to 30 years in prison for sabotaging gas lines around the capital in an apparent attempt to wreak death and mayhem.