Cape fires

• SABC Breaking news - Khayelitsha family die in shack blaze

Handicapped children killed in Cape fires

Seven informal settlement residents, including three handicapped children and a man, have died in fires over the weekend and more than 100 others have been left homeless.

The city's Disaster Risk Management is providing at least 115 people with meals and blankets.

Early on Sunday, an Atlantis couple were burnt to death while sleeping in their Protea Park wendy house.

Lea Mentoor and Randall Kolver, both 35, were found dead after firefighters extinguished the flames, spokesperson Siphokazi Mawisa said.

The cause of the blaze was unknown and police were investigating.

Mawisa said inquest dockets had also been opened into a Masiphumelele fire in which eight shacks were destroyed yesterday, a Philippi blaze which razed 10 shacks and a fire in Wallacedene where 18 shacks burnt down.

She said police had also opened an inquest docket into the fire at the Zanokhanyo Educare Centre in Makhaza, Khayelitsha, where two boys, aged 11 and 15 years, a 21-year-old man and a 14-year-old girl, all of them handicapped, were killed on Friday.

Their names had not been released by yesterday as Mawisa said police were still trying to trace their relatives. - Cape Times