Three young sisters have died in a house fire in northern England despite their mother's attempts to rescue them, police say.
The girls were trapped after a fierce blaze tore through the ground floor of a house in Lancashire late on Friday night.
"The mother of the children tried in vain to rescue her children but was forced back by the heat and the smoke," a Lancashire constabulary spokesman said today.
She escaped the fire by jumping from an upstairs window and firefighters wearing breathing apparatus reached her children.
The children were taken to Burnley Royal Infirmary where they were pronounced dead. Police named them as Louise Waddington, 11, Hayley, 10 and Gemma, seven.
A Lancashire fire service spokesman said it was investigating the cause of the blaze.