Five children are dead after a Saturday morning fire in their family's North Carolina apartment, according to hospital officials.
Two children died Saturday night and the other three died Sunday after they were removed from life support, a Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center spokesperson said, wfmynews2.com reported.
An adult who was removed from the burning apartment by the Greensboro Fire Department was treated and released from an area hospital, according to myfox8.com.
The adult has been identified as the father of the children by The Associated Press.
All five children were younger than 8 years old, neighbors told myfox8.com, which also reported that the victims were a refugee family from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
"To see how another man, another parent like me was crying, for the babies, I was feeling so bad," Louis Pasteur Mashengo, a neighbor, said, according to wfmynews2.com. "We give birth to our kids so that one day they can bury us; we don't give birth to our kids so we can bury them."
Neighbors told The Associated Press that the children's mother was at work at the time of the fire.
Just before 4 a.m., firefighters responded to reports of a fire, which they described as a two-alarm blaze, wfmynews2.com reported.
Smoke and flames were coming from the front of the apartment, according to the fire department, which said the blaze was under control by about 4:15 a.m., according to myfox8.com.
The cause of the fire has not been determined, and Assistant Chief Dwayne Church told the AP that the incident remains under investigation.
The father of the family complained about small fires around the stove three days before the fatal fire, according to Latosha Walker, North Carolina African Services Coalition operations manager, myfox8.com reported.
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