The Associated Press
LONDON — A woman and her four daughters were killed early Wednesday in a house fire in northwestern England that police were investigating as murder.
Firefighters broke through a window of the home in Accrington at about 2 a.m. (0200GMT) and found the five bodies upstairs, said Police Detective Mick Gradwell.
The children’s father escaped the blaze with severe burns, and police were waiting to question him at a hospital where he was being treated in critical condition, Gradwell said.
A fifth child in the family — a 17-year-old boy — was being treated for leukemia at another hospital at the time of the blaze, Gradwell told a news conference.
The mother was identified as Canaze Riaz, 39, the four girls who died — Sayrah, Sophia, Alicia, Hannah _ ranged in age from 3 to 16.
Police were trying to determine how their father — Mohammed Riaz, in his mid-40s — survived the blaze. He works at a local plastics factory, neighbors said.
“The house was secured and locked from the inside. Early indications are that whoever set the fire, and carried out some other suspicious activity I can’t go into at this stage, did not leave the premises,” Gradwell said. “However, I can’t discount that a scene has been staged to suggest this. Therefore, inquiries are continuing.”
Mrs. Riaz, who was born in Britain but educated in Pakistan, worked with a group that helps schools and mosques assist South Asian immigrants. She also was a board member of network that promotes unity among the area’s different religious and ethnic groups.
“They were so friendly and generous,” Ghazala Ahmeda, a friend, said of the Riaz family.
Mrs. Riaz “fit in really well with the community. She was really well-liked ... (but) she was a bit down because of her son’s illness,” she said.