7 children dies in House fire!!!

An ultra-Orthodox Jewish community shattered by the deaths of seven siblings in a house fire carried out their funerals Sunday, a day after a hot plate left on for the Sabbath is believed to have sparked the fire that killed them.
The tragedy had some neighborhood Jews reconsidering the practice of keeping hot plates on for the Sabbath, a common modern method of obeying tradition prohibiting use of fire on the holy day.The relentless blaze that spread from a malfunctioning hot plate in the family’s first-floor kitchen to the upstairs bedrooms early Saturday morning, killing seven of the Sassoon children and critically injuring their sister and mother.

The bodies of the children from the Sassoon family, ages 5 to 16, were being sent to Israel after the funeral for a prompt burial. Flames engulfed their two-story, brick-and-wood home in Brooklyn's Midwood neighborhood early Saturday, likely after a hot plate left on a kitchen counter set off the fire that trapped the children and badly injured their mother and another sibling, investigators said.

The service at the Shomrei Hadas funeral home began with prayers in Hebrew, accompanied by the wailing voices of mourners. They could be heard through speakers that broadcast the rite to hundreds of people gathered outside on the streets in traditional black robes and flat-brimmed hats.

"They were so pure," Gabriel Sassoon said of his children during a eulogy he delivered through sobs. "My wife, she came out fighting."

Both his surviving wife and a daughter — Gayle Sassoon and 14-year-old Siporah Sassoon — remained in critical condition on respirators.

"My children were unbelievable. They were the best," he said, calling them "angels."

Earlier at the family's fire-gutted home on Bedford Avenue, a police officer stood guard as contractors boarded up windows with plywood.

The blaze killed three girls and four boys — all members of the neighborhood's tightknit community of ultra-Orthodox Jews. Authorities identified the victims as girls Eliane, 16; Rivkah, 11; and Sara, 6; and boys David, 12; Yeshua, 10; Moshe, 8; and Yaakob, 5.

(culled: yahoo news)
This is so sad! May their souls rest in perfect peace...... so hard to comprehend this!!! Lord please protect us all..............