The police rescued three small children who were home alone on Thursday afternoon from a heavily smoky apartment in Ansfelden-Haid (Linz-Land district). Neighbors heard children screaming and called the police. When the officers came, the smoke detector in the stairwell of the apartment building had already gone off.
After the apartment door was not opened in response to shouts or knocks, a policewoman kicked it in. In the bedroom, she and a colleague found three children aged one, four and five, and there was no one else in the home, police said.
The little ones were taken outside, at the same time the mother came home from shopping. She accompanied her children to the hospital. The fire is believed to have started from a pot on the stove in the kitchen. The mother is shown.