Five people arrested in connection with arson attack that killed mother and her three teenage children

• Neurosurgeon who lost wife and children in the blaze returned to the UK
  
• Mother and her three children found in an upstairs bedroom following fire
  
• Officers are also investigating links to murder in the city hours earlier
• Police have said the family were not involved in the earlier attack
  
• Neighbours have spoken of fears that family were mistakenly targeted
  
• Tributes have been paid to the 'spiritual, humble and learned' family

By James Rush, Andy Dolan, Sara Smyth and Neil Michael

Five people have been arrested in connection with a suspected arson attack which claimed the lives of four members of the same family.

Shehnila Taufiq, 47, her sons Jamal, 15, and Bilal, 17, and 19-year-old daughter Zainab all died in the house blaze in Wood Hill, Leicester, early on Friday.

It is feared that the property was targeted by mistake in a revenge arson attack following an earlier incident on Thursday in nearby Kent Street when  a man was murdered.

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Victims: Bilal Taufiq Sattar (left)  and his brother Jamal (right) who died with their mother Shehnila in the Leicester house fire

News of the arrests came minutes after Muhammad Taufiq Al Sattar spoke of his pain at the loss of his wife, daughter and teenage sons in the fire at their home in Wood Hill, Leicester, in the early hours of Friday morning.

Leicestershire Police said three women aged 19, 20 and 27 and two men aged 19 and 49 were detained over the fatal blaze.

Two men and a woman, all aged 19, have also been arrested over the killing of the man in his 20s, named as Antoin Akpom.

Earlier today police confirmed there was no evidence Shehnila Taufiq, 48, and her three teenage children Zainab, Jamal and Bilal, had been involved in the nearby murder of a 20-year-old man.

Dr Muhammad Taufiq Al Sattar, who flew back from where he had been working in Ireland following the fire which killed his family, has today said: 'I deeply miss my beautiful wife and three beautiful children.

'What has happened has happened, and nothing can be reversed, but I hope justice prevails and in future, this should not happen to any family in the UK.'

Officers are continuing to investigate possible links between the two incidents, but Assistant Chief Constable Roger Bannister today said there was 'nothing to suggest' the family had been linked to the earlier attack.

He said: 'While we are investigating links between the two crimes there is absolutely no evidence to suggest those who died in the fire, or indeed anyone else who lives in that property, was involved in the assault in Kent Street.

'Because of the close proximity - in terms of time and location - of the two incidents, it is right that we look at whether there are links between the two crimes.

However, at this stage in our investigations we have found nothing to suggest the residents of the house devastated by the fire had anything to do with the Kent Street incident.'

Two women and a man, all aged 19, have been arrested in connection to the attack in Kent Street. Police said the man was arrested in London while the two women were arrested in the Warwickshire area.

Neighbours have described hearing a mother screaming 'Please save my children' moments before she was killed alongside them in a house fire

Police and firefighters were called to the building in the Spinney Hills area of the city at about 12.35am

The devastated husband and father of the family, neurosurgeon Muhammad Taufiq Sattar, was working in Dublin at the time, but has now returned home and is being comforted at his local mosque.

Mrs Taufiq, her 19-year-old daughter and her two sons, aged 17 and 15 died in their bedrooms at their terraced house. The Islamic teacher was heard screaming 'please save my children' by witnesses to the fire in the early hours of Friday.

On returning to the city, Dr Sattar, 52, immediately went to the Jamia Mosque, just around the corner from his burned-out family home, where he was embraced by shocked members of the community.

Neighbours said they fear the family were mistakenly targeted in a revenge attack for someone else.

Mr Bannister today said: 'We have three people in custody in relation to the murder of the young man in Kent Street and we continue with the complex forensic investigations at Wood Hill.

'However, we know there are local people who know more about both incidents and the people responsible and we would appeal to their consciences. Two families have been devastated by events of the past 48 hours. Please help us to find those responsible.'

A police cordon was placed around the burned-out property as white-suited forensics teams and fire investigators hunted for clues

On Friday, Mr Bannister said officers were investigating a theory that Mrs Taufiq and her children were killed in revenge for the earlier attack.

He said: 'I can't confirm here and now it is a revenge attack - it may be, it may not be - but lines of inquiry will certainly get to the bottom of that.'

The man who was killed in Kent Street has been named locally as father-of-one Antoin Akpom

Urging witnesses to get in touch, he said it was possible that both offences, which he described as 'terrible, terrible crimes', were linked.

People at the scene with the man who was killed in Kent Street – named locally last night as Antoin Akpom, 20, a father of one and former football coach – were said to have been heard vowing revenge on the person responsible.

There were rumours that a group of hooded men had been seen walking away from the house shortly before the blaze took hold.

A neighbour said: ‘Most people feel this was meant for somebody else and they got the wrong house.’

Neighbours had tried to break into the property but were beaten back by flames.

Omar Mujahed, a friend who runs an Islamic community centre in Dublin, said Mr Sattar had told him: ‘I just can’t believe this had happened. It just can’t be true.’

Mr Mujahed said: ‘Dr Sattar was distraught. He was so upset he just couldn’t take the news in.’

Leicester East MP Keith Vaz later met Mr Sattar and said he was ‘understandably devastated’.

The member for Leicester East, met local people near the police cordon sealing off Wood Hill.

He said: 'If indeed people have deliberately done this, then I'm sure the police will do everything they can in order to catch them and to bring them to justice.'

Police have said the 'circumstances and cause of the fire are currently under investigation'

The Labour MP added that the father was left with ‘just one question – why?’

A witness to the fire said: ‘There were lots of flames coming out of the bedroom window. I heard screaming, lots of screaming, I could hear a woman’s voice shouting, “Please help, save my children”. It was horrific.’

Mr Sattar and his wife moved to Manchester from Pakistan before settling in Dublin around 15 years ago.

They own a house there and had planned to settle in the city when their children had finished their education.

Mr Sattar worked at Dublin’s Beaumont Hospital, and also practised privately at two clinics in the city.

The family bought their Leicester property in 2007.

Four die in fire police say may have been revenge attack

A neighbour has described seeing 'flames shooting out of the back of the house' during the fire

A witness to the earlier murder in Leicester’s Kent Street on Wednesday evening said he had heard someone vowing to take revenge against the killer.

Garage mechanic Harish Chauhan, 56, said: ‘I could hear shouting and screaming about getting revenge. It seemed like they knew the attacker, or at least they thought that they did.’

The Jame Mosque attended by the Taufiq family issued a statement expressing shock at the deaths.

Mr Sattar is a consultant neurosurgeon and has been working in Beaumont Hospital in Dublin and with private hospitals in the city, the Blackrock and Hermitage clinics.

Colleagues at Beaumont Hospital, Blackrock and the Hermitage expressed their sympathy.

Leicester-based Imam Ibrahim Mogra, assistant secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, visited the scene.

Local MP Keith Vaz (pictured meeting residents near the scene of the fire) said he had spoken with Dr Sattar after he flew back to the UK from Dublin

He said: 'It's hard to believe that such a tragedy could occur and four lives could be lost in a matter of minutes.'

Local shopkeeper Sattar Raidhan, who has lived in the area for 35 years, said: 'I can't even imagine how this would happen to a family like that.'

The force has drafted in extra officers and forensics staff to probe both crimes and increased patrols in the area.

Mr Vaz later returned to the scene, having spoken with Mr Sattar, and said: 'He is obviously in a state of shock over what has happened and I conveyed to him the love and affection of this very close-knit community.'

He added: 'Putting yourself in his position, you go off to work to save lives as a doctor and you arrive home and find your wife and two sons and daughter are all dead in the most horrible of circumstances. It's absolutely terrible.'

Police said the victim of the Kent Street murder had not yet been formally identified.

Several hours before the fire in Wood Hill a 20-year-old man was attacked half a mile away in Kent Street

Police said in a statement: 'The whole area is being carefully examined which may take some time.

'Specially-trained officers will be searching for evidence connected to the incident and this requires careful searching under and around vehicles parked in the street, front gardens and pavements.'

A middle-aged man, who was woken by the sound of neighbours attempting to alert the family, said the heat of the fire was so intense it could be felt on the opposite pavement.

A witness to the earlier incident described how he saw the victim collapse in the street after a row involving more than a dozen young men.

The man, who did not want to be identified, said: 'My attention was caught by a lot of shouting in the street just before 5.30pm.

'I then saw two young men run down Kent Street towards the A47. A group of up to 15 young men then started walking down Kent Street and turned into Sussex Street.

Witnesses have described the desperate attempts to rescue the family who were found in an upstairs bedroom inside the house

'It was when he turned his back on me that I saw that he had been stabbed just under the shoulder blade.

'The police arrived almost immediately and he went down onto the road. I did not know if he had been arrested because he was walking normally until he collapsed. It was then I saw a police officer, wearing latex gloves, trying to help him then I knew it was serious.'

Police chiefs and community leaders, including local MP Keith Vaz, have appealed for calm following the 'terrible crimes', and extra patrols were laid on to reassure worried locals.

Witnesses have described the desperate attempts to rescue the family who were found in an upstairs bedroom inside the £99,000 mid-terraced house.

Student Mohammed Ali, 19, rushed out of his house on the street when he heard people screaming for help from the upstairs bedroom window.

Police have said four people were found in upstairs bedrooms at the terraced house

He said: 'I ran out of my house because I heard lots of people running and windows being smashed.

'People were throwing stones at the window to try and break them to help, but the smoke was so thick and just poured out, it was so thick it was unreal.

'When I got there the fire service was there too, they had kicked the door down, I could see in the house.

'The way the house is built, the stairs are right at the door as you go in, I saw the stairs engulfed in flames, everyone was screaming, it was like something from a horror movie.

'All the windows were on fire, all of them, the smoke went everywhere, everyone was panicking and trying to help but they couldn't.

'The man there was a doctor, the kids were innocent, I didn't know their names but know they went to the Islamic school nearby.'

Hashim Bahadur, 58, a businessman who works across the road from the gutted house, said: 'Police have closed everything down'

A 20-year-old man was attacked in Kent Street. He later died after being taken to Leicester Royal Infirmary, following the assault

Diogo Mascarenhas, 78, a neighbour, said: 'There were flames shooting out of the back of the house into the yard which I could see from my bathroom window 40 yards away.

'I looked outside and saw lots of people watching what was going on, the fire brigade, the police and ambulance.

'It looked very serious and I was worried the fire would spread because flames can spread through the roof of terraced houses. I'm sad about what happened but I didn't know the family myself.'

Neighbours watch on as the police and fire service investigate the scene of the blaze

Fire crews at the scene of a house fire in Leicester which claimed the lives of four people

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