by KERRY BURKE, BRENDAN BROSH and RICH SCHAPIRO
An earth-shaking gas explosion sparked a flash fire in a Harlem apartment building yesterday that left four young sisters and their mother fighting for their lives and also injured 16 others, authorities said.
Bloody and dazed, several residents stumbled out of the five-story walkup at 10 W. 119th St. right after the 4 p.m. blast, witnesses said.
Inside, Yemeni immigrant Alouf Hassnin, who was critically burned herself, cradled her severely injured baby girl, crying out, "My kids! my kids!"
"I want to be dead," her husband, Rassas Alghaithi, 28, said after visiting his four critically burned daughters at Harlem Hospital last night. "This is my family. These are my kids."
Alghaithi, a Harlem deli worker who has been in the U.S. for three years, was on his way home from a nearby grocery store with his cousin when he noticed his home was surrounded by fire trucks and ambulances.
His worst fears were soon realized.
"I brought my family from Michigan just last week," he said. "I work hard and I wanted them to be with me. And now, they are taken from me. Like this. I don't want no life."
His cousin, Mufeed Hafeed, 30, said the four girls - Duaa, 5; Twka, 4; Lina, 3, and Afaf, 1 - were disfigured by the blast.
"The children are burnt terribly," he said. "We don't even recognize them they're so burned. Their faces and bodies are changed. We're doing all we can to not go crazy."
Victor Albino, 33, said he and a handful of other Good Samaritans had rushed into the smoke-filled building to help evacuate tenants, including Afaf.
"People came running out with blood running down their faces," Albino said. "The front door was jammed so we had to kick it in....We couldn't see or breathe. The explosion went all the way up to the third floor."
Albino, a barber who works across the street, said he raced out of the building with the badly burned girl in his arms before returning to the charred tenement to pull more people out.
"She was burned all over her upper body," said Victoria Perez, 23, who lives in the building and said it frequently smells of gas. "She was burned so badly you could see the pink under her flesh."
Afaf and her three sisters were expected to be transferred to the burn unit at New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell late last night where their mother was also being treated.
A 40-year-old woman who was burned over more than 50% of her body was taken to St. Luke's Hospital in critical condition.
Police took three other children to area hospitals, where they were in stable condition, a Fire Department spokesman said.
Authorities said the 11 other victims, including two firefighters hurt by falling debris, were also brought to area hospitals with non-life-threatening injuries.
Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta said the explosion occurred in the kitchen of a first-floor apartment at the back of the building.
"It does appear to be a gas leak explosion that then causes a flash fire," Scoppetta said at the scene.
A Con Ed spokeswoman said there was no immediate evidence of a gas leak, but utility crews were at the site to investigate.
Mayor Bloomberg visited the scene of the blast and then went to Weill Cornell to visit some of the victims and their family members.
The blast rocked the densely populated block, leaving several residents shaken hours after the explosion.
"I thought my building was coming down," said Ruth Jackson, 43, who lives next-door. "I thought it was an earthquake. It was a double explosion. It was massive."
With Dorian Block, Jotham Sederstrom, John Lauinger, Alison Gendar and Andy Greiner
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