Girls visited Santa just days before Christmas Day blaze

IT IS a haunting image of two young sisters, full of life and excitement, enjoying a visit to Santa just days before they perished in a Christmas morning house fire.

Like all children, Zsara, 7, and Nadia, 2, were looking forward to opening their presents on Thursday morning.

But they died alongside their mother Sharon Whelan, 28, after fire broke out in their two-storey farmhouse in an isolated rural area near the village of Windgap in Co Kilkenny on Christmas morning.