All seven kids in Syrian refugee family die in Halifax fire

It's difficult to imagine what is going through the minds of Ebraheim and Kawthar Barho today. The Syrian refugees arrived in Nova Scotia in 2017, sponsored by a volunteer group, and brought with them their family of seven children, ranging from four months to fifteen years of age: Adullah, Rana, Hala, Ola, Mohamad, Rola and Ahmad. By all reports, they were ideal immigrants, sociable, keen to integrate into society and to explore all that Canada has to offer.
Now, however, all seven children are dead, after a freak fire at their house in Spryfield, just outside Halifax. Ebraheim also suffered extensive, possibly even life-threatening, burns, as he tried to get to his kids, who were all asleep upstairs at the time. Kawthar is physically unhurt. but psychologically scarred, occasionally reverting to a kind of fugue state, constantly repeating the children's names. Ironically, the family was due to move from the Spryfield house in just over a week's time. It is thought that the fire may have started from a faulty baseboard heater behind a sofa, although there are also reports from neighbours of some kind of an explosion, so we will have to wait for the official report to be sure.
But what a turn of events: after years in a refugee camp in Lebanon, to the euphoria of a new life in Canada, and then this. A CBC interview with one of the family's immigration sponsors, and a close friend, will probably have you in tears.