Young sisters miraculously found in same hospital after London blaze
The family of 8-year-old Malek and 6-year-old Tamzin Belkadi feared the worst when the sisters were reported missing after the terrifying inferno which engulfed London’s Grenfell Tower on Wednesday morning.
24 hours later, they have finally been located and identified – miraculously in the same hospital. One of the girls is reportedly sedated and the other is in a coma. One of the girls was said to be “screaming” as she went into hospital. Their parents, Farah Hamdan and Omar Belkadi, along with their baby sister, are still unaccounted for.
Adel Chaoui, Farah’s cousin, has criticised authorities for using the same protocols they would if the disaster had been a terrorist incident. There needs to be separate protocol for civil disasters. That’s what’s going wrong here,” he told The Telegraph. “They’re still treating everyone as suspects.”
“The hospitals had no idea who these children were – they didn’t even realise they were related.”
Meanwhile, the first victim of the confirmed 17 dead (though there are reports the number could rise above 100) has been formally identified. Mohammad Alhajali, just 23 years old, was a Syrian refugee studying in the UK. He was trapped inside the building with his brother, Omar, and was unable to escape due to the overwhelming smoke.
“He sent a message to family in Syria in his final moments just saying, ‘The fire is here now, goodbye,’” a family friend told the Telegraph. Alhajali’s friends have taken to social media to share photos of their lost loved one, describing him as a “beautiful soul”.
His brother is believed to have made it out of the tower and is now recovering in hospital.