Asylum seekers left homeless after hostel fire

ELEVEN children and their mothers were being cared for in temporary accommodation last night after a television left on top of a cooker set their hostel on fire.

The 22 asylum seekers were saved by smoke alarms, which woke them from their sleep at the Oakley Lodge hostel in Ranelagh, south Dublin, in the early hours of yesterday morning.

A fast-acting caretaker managed to keep the blaze under control with a domestic fire extinguisher and begin evacuating the families until two units of the Dublin Fire Brigade and an ambulance arrived on the scene.