A BOY of four and a man have died in two separate fires in neighbouring Thanet towns.

The boy died in hospital after being pulled from a blazing house in Margate. His five-year-old brother is critically ill in the town's Queen Mother Hospital.

The pair had been freed from the first floor of the house at Jennifer Gardens on the Dane Valley estate by firefighters wearing breathing apparatus. A brigade spokeswoman said that the children’s mother, and a young boy who was their friend, escaped unhurt.

THE MAN died in a blaze which broke out just before lunchtime, Friday, in a three-storey Georgian terrace house on Abbot's Hill, Ramsgate.

The fire brigade had a 999 call at 12.11pm from a woman, believed to the man's wife, who managed to escape.

The fire, thought to have started accidentally, began in a library full of books and papers.