[caption id="attachment_151787" align="alignleft" width="259"]
Civil Defense personnel evacuating people from a building which caught fire in Jeddah’s Al-Nuzha District.[/caption]
Saudi Gazette report
JEDDAH — The police are investigating the mysterious disappearance of a woman in her 20s after a fire on Sunday, Al-Madina Arabic daily reported on Tuesday.
Makkah Civil Defense spokesman Col. Saeed Sarhan said the Civil Defense received reports of a fire in an apartment in Al-Nuzha District.
“The Civil Defense received the report at 9:41 a.m. on Sunday. We only needed six minutes to reach the fire location north of Jeddah. We could see the smoke clouds coming out of the windows of an apartment on the third floor of a three-story apartment building,” said Sarhan.
Civil Defense officers searched the building and found six people trapped inside, he added.
“The trapped victims were two men in their 20s and a woman in her 40s. The Civil Defense then extinguished the fire. Investigations revealed that the fire started in a piece of furniture in the living room and then spread to other rooms,” said Sarhan.
He said the Civil Defense also found a six-year-old boy inside the apartment. They then found the boy’s father trapped inside.
“The Civil Defense carried the son and the father out of the building. They had both suffered burn injuries and suffocation. Once out of the building, the Civil Defense officers realized that the father had already passed away. They carried the son to the emergency ward of a hospital but he died at the hospital due to suffocation,” said Sarhan.
The Civil Defense then realized that a woman in her 20s had gone missing. She was a part of the family but her body was never found.
Makkah Police reported the police took the description of the woman from her uncle. There was no trace of her in the bodies found in the fire. The Civil Defense forwarded the case to the police and the police opened an investigation led by Lt. Gen. Saeed Al-Qarni.
