A 36-YEAR-OLD woman, her three children and their housemaid barely escaped with their lives in the early hours of yesterday after an arson attack on the Latsia flat in which they were sleeping.
It was the third time the woman had been the victim of an arson attack, once on her person in 2007 and last year on her car/
The alarm was raised in the latest attack at around 3am yesterday after the perpetrators doused the door of the second-floor flat with flammable material and set it on fire, leaving the two women and three children without a way out.
Fire services and police rushed to the scene but by that time the flat’s residents had woken up and were looking for a way out of the flat.
“The apartment was filled with smoke,” said Fire Services spokeswoman Lisa Kemmedji.
“The mother managed to save her eight-year old daughter by passing her through the window of the apartment next door,” she added.
Ultimately the woman, the 27-year-old housemaid and the woman’s 14-year-old twins were rescued by the Fire Department using a hydraulic lifting platform.
All five were taken to Nicosia General Hospital and treated for smoke inhalation.
The fire destroyed the entrance of the apartment while the interior of the apartment and the building suffered extensive damages.
“First investigations reveal that the arsonist or arsonists doused the wooden door of the second floor apartment with flammable material,” said Kemmedji. She could not say more until the investigations were completed. Police took statements from neighbours and others in the area.
In emerged that the unnamed woman had been attacked in 2007 by her ex-boyfriend in the parking area of her apartment building.
The suspect Andreas Costas Andreou, 38 who is serving nine years had knocked her to the ground, doused her in petrol and set her alight before running away. She had managed to put out the flames on the upper part of her body by diving into a puddle in the road in front of her apartment building.
Last summer unknown perpetrators set the woman’s car alight, again outside the building.
Put to Nicosia Divisional Commander Kypros Michaelides yesterday that the woman was clearly at risk, he said: “This is something that concerns us.”
