Toddler among five dead in New York house fire

(Reuters) - Five people, including a 2-year-old toddler and two other children, died on Sunday in a house fire in the New York City borough of Queens, the city's deadliest such blaze in two years, Mayor Bill de Blasio said.

A passing motorist spotted the roaring fire that engulfed the home in the Queens Village neighborhood and called the fire department around 2:30 p.m., the New York Fire Department said in a statement on its Facebook page.

"Our members arrived in just over four minutes and were met by a house completely consumed with fire," FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro told a news conference. "None of the five people in the home survived. It’s a terrible, tragic loss."

He said the youngest victim was 2 years old.

Three children were among the dead, de Blasio said at the news conference. He did not release their names or ages.

"Our job now is to get down to the bottom of what happened and do everything we can to make sure that no family ever suffers like this again," de Blasio said on Twitter.

The cause of the fire, which took firefighters more than three hours to control, was under investigation, he said.

(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento, Calif.; Editing by Peter Cooney)

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