A woman has rescued her four children from a burning building by dropping them from a window.

The family was in a five-storey building in Istanbul’s Esenler district when the fire took hold on Wednesday.

As black smoke billowed from the window of their third-floor apartment, bystanders were heard screaming, some of them shouting at her not to drop the children.

The Daily Sabah reported that volunteers had stretched out a blanket as a makeshift net to catch the children as they were dropped out of the window, one by one.

Each child was carried to an ambulance after they landed on the blanket.

A witness told the newspaper: “First, black smoke started to come out. Then, the children started shouting from the windows and we opened the blankets.

“A woman threw the children down from above, so we caught four kids with blankets.”

The mother was taken to hospital as a precaution but all five members of the family were uninjured, according to news reports.

Two other children and two adults were also rescued from the building.

The blaze is thought to have started in an electrical panel, and it was extinguished by firefighters.

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