Child falls to death while waiting for father near window

Another child has died after falling from an apartment window. The seven-year-old boy fell from the sixth floor, police sources said.

Police said the accident happened at around 2pm on Monday when the Iranian boy, Khashiad Sadeq Khan, was home alone in Al Nahda.

A friend of the family told Gulf News Khashiad had not attended school that day. His grieving father said he had bathed his son and fed him. He told him to watch television quietly while he went to pick up his 11-year-old daughter from school.

Ten minutes after his father had left the boy pulled up a chair and stood near the window calling for his father.

"He was looking down to see if his father was coming or not. But unfortunately he fell from the sixth-floor window.

"We took the boy to Al Qasimi Hospital. He was kept in intensive care for three hours but around 6pm he stopped breathing."

The friend added the boy and his sister were living alone with their father following their parents' separation. Their mother is now living in Iran.

The police official said parents should not leave their children alone unsupervised.

"Children should not be left home alone for any reason. Whatever the excuse children should not be kept alone at home. There should be an adult with them," a police official said yesterday.

He added that such accidents happen regularly.

"Some children fall from windows or balconies. Other set fire to themselves and get burnt. Others run to the street and are hit by a car and other children die of electric shocks," he said.

He said parents and adults should give their children more engaging work to do and take more care to avoid accidents and spare heartaches.

Accidents
A glance into the immediate past

In less than six months at least four children have fallen out of windows or off balconies in Sharjah.

• In December 2004, one-year-old Iraqi, Murtada Yahia Jaber, died after falling out of a window of a third-floor apartment in Al Shwaiheen. His mother saw him but was unable to reach him in time.
• In February a six-year-old Egyptian boy, Khalid, fell from a window near the sixth-floor stairwell of an apartment on Al Arouba Road. His fall was broken when his clothes got caught briefly on a first floor railing before he hit the floor. He had been playing with friends.
• This month a six-year-old Indian boy escaped with a broken leg after falling from the second floor of a building in Abu Shagara.