2-Year-Old Charred To Death, 4-Year-Old Critical After Lit Mosquito Repellent Coil Causes Fire

A 2-year-old child died, and his 4-year-old sister was in a critical condition after a lit mosquito repellent coil reportedly caused a fire inside a house in Bangladesh.

The children's mother, aged 25, also sustained critical burn injuries during the incident, which took place Monday in an apartment on the third floor home of a building in Munshiganj, a district in the central part of the country, Dhaka Tribune reported.

Neighbors, who noticed the fire after seeing smoke coming out of the apartment, knocked down the door to rescue the mother and her children, local police said. Initially, the three victims were rushed to the state-run hospital in Sreenagar upazila town, where on-duty doctors declared the 2-year-old, identified as Ayas Mridha, dead.

The 4-year-old and her mother were then immediately taken to Dhaka’s Sheikh Hasina National Institute of Burn and Plastic Surgery for treatment.

“A lit mosquito repellent coil is believed to have caused the fire. An investigation is underway,” Sreepur police officer Md Kamruzzaman reportedly said.

A police officer, identified as Ziaul Islam, told local media UNB the victim’s father, identified as Bappi Mridha, had stepped out of the house when the fire broke out. The repellent coil they had used to drive away mosquitoes likely came in contact with flammable materials that caught fire.

Officials have launched an investigation into the incident. The exact condition of the two others was not revealed as of Monday night.

If burning mosquito coils are not discarded properly, they can easily cause fire. In a recent case in Taiwan, a woman was being investigated for arson after a mosquito coil she discarded was found at a suspected point of origin of a fire that killed 46 people. On Oct. 14, a fire broke out in the Cheng Chung Cheng Building in Kaohsiung’s Yancheng District. The fire department officials battled for five hours to extinguish the fire, Taiwan News reported.

In 2018, a 90-year-old man and his daughter died after a burning cinder from a mosquito repellent set a portion of their house on fire. The incident took place in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The elderly man and his daughter were asleep when flames from a burning mosquito repellent fell on his bed and the sheet caught fire, The Hindu reported at the time.