Father and four children killed in house fire

A Scottish mining village was stunned by the deaths of four children and their father in a house fire yesterday.

The children's mother, Jaqueline Oswald, 26, survived after jumping from a window but her husband, Andrew, 33; three of their four daughters – twins aged two and a three-year-old – and their four-year-old son died after the blaze in their top-floor flat in Sunnybraes Terrace in Steelend, near Dunfermline, Fife. The fourth daughter, 7, was at school.

Neighbours tried to rescue the family after Mrs Oswald raised the alarm but her father, James Steele, said the children seemed to have been in the back bedroom when the fire started. Mr Steele, 56, said his daughter had recently undergone surgery for cancer.

Mr Oswald's 14-year-old son from a previous marriage died last July when he was dragged underneath the wheels of a bus in Edinburgh.