Maid sets sponsor’s house on fire, ends life

An African housemaid  in her 20s set her Saudi employer’s house on fire then hanged herself in the back garden, a newspaper reported on Friday.

Police and civil defence had rushed to the house in the eastern port of Dammam following a report it was on fire.

“We managed to put out the fire…we then found the maid hanged by the fence in the back garden…she had apparently set the house on fire while the family members were out before committing a suicide,” police spokesman Colonel Ziad Al Rugaiti said, quoted by the Saudi Arabic language daily Alyoum.

5 kids killed in Saudi house fire

Five African children were killed when their house in Saudi Arabia was engulfed in fire on Thursday night, newspapers reported on Friday.

Police said the charred bodies of the five kids, all under 8 years, were pulled out of the shabby house in the western Saudi town of Makkah by neighbours before the arrival of the civil defence, which managed to put out the blaze.

Sabq daily quoted a police spokesman as saying the incident is under investigation to determine the cause of the fire, which he said swept through the house quickly because it was built mostly of wood.

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