Three young siblings chose to stay and die with their parents in the Grenfell Tower fire – rather than leave them to die alone on the 17th floor, it’s emerged.
As smoke and flames engulfed the building, bride-to-be Husna Begum, 22, and her brothers, Hanif, 26, and Hamid, 29, spoke to relatives on the phone and explained their decision to stay.
In an emotional conversation more than two hours after the blaze began, the children told them that there was no way they could leave their mother, Rabeya, who was in her 60s, and 82-year-old father, Kamru Miah.
The British-Bangladeshis also told their relatives not to grieve for them as they were ‘going to a better place’.
It’s been claimed they had an ‘opportunity’ of almost an hour after the fire began at around 12.50am to make their way to safety – until about 1.45am – and were last heard of on the phone at 3.10am.
Their cousin, Samir Ahmad, 18, told The Times : “Their dad could barely walk anyway.”What were they going to do? Abandon him?” Mr Ahmad said he believed “until around 1.45am they could have left their parents, but they didn’t.”
Of their final conversation, he said: “My auntie spoke to Hanif. He was very calm. He said his time had come, and not to mourn for them, but be happy for them because they would be in a better place. Hats off to them.
They didn’t show cowardice. They stayed with their mum and dad. Family was so important to them. They lived together and they died together.” Mr Ahmad said he believed the children would have been haunted for the rest of their lives.
Ms Begum was due to get married in Leicester next month – and her distraught fiancé and extended family are expected to remember them in a public prayer ceremony at 6pm today.
One brother Mohammed Hakim, who had been at the home earlier in the evening but left before the blaze, is known to have survived.