8 Children among 12 dead in US fire

Jacuita Purifoy lost ten family members when a fire tore through a converted three-story house in Philadelphia Wednesday, killing 12 people in one of the United States' deadliest residential infernos in recent years.

"My sisters and my nephews and my nieces are gone. They are never coming back again," the 37-year-old told AFP outside a nearby elementary school where families of victims were consoling each other.

Eight children were killed in the blaze. Purifoy lost seven younger relatives, the youngest of whom was just one-year-old.

Three of Purifoy's sisters also died in the fire, which happened just before sunrise in public housing in the eastern US city's popular museum district of Fairmount, reports AFP.

"I am in shock. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to say," said Purifoy.

"They was somebody who was supposed to continue life and die of old age, not from stuff that could have been avoided."

Officials said eight people escaped the flames, while another two were hospitalized. One of the two receiving treatment was a five-year-old nephew of Purifoy.

"Everybody is gone except for one child," she said.

"He don't know what's going on. He wants his mom, he wants his dad, he wants his sisters, he wants his cousins, he wants everybody that he had lived with for the past five years.

"He don't know what's going on, because he's still a child," Purifoy added.

At the Bache-Martin Elementary School, a block away from the site of the disaster, a Salvation Army truck handed out supplies to relatives.

Purifoy rubbed the back of her sister Qaadira, who wept as she tried to keep out the cold with a Salvation Army blanket.

Near the burnt building, a local laid a white rose on the ground under police tape.