A mother stood in shock as she watched her five-year-old son engulfed in flames as a barbecue soaked him in flammable liquid.

“My son was suddenly washed in the flammable solution that this person had tried to use to light his barbecue. I saw my son light up in a ball of flames before me.

“He was on fire from head to toe,” Audrey Grech Coldman told the Times of Malta.

Her son, along with another 10-year-old boy, was severely burnt after a Birżebbuġa resident’s attempt to light a summer barbecue on his balcony went terribly wrong last Friday.

The boys were gearing up for a dancing competition on the Birżebbuġa seafront when the rain of fire came washing down from an apartment block overhead.

“What this person did was negligence and complete carelessness. How can you try and light a barbecue like that when you know there are all those children right beneath your balcony?” she said.

Both boys were still in Mater Dei Hospital receiving treatment after they suffered severe burns to around 12 per cent of their bodies.

It was negligence and complete carelessness.How can you try and light a barbecue when you know there are all those children right beneath your balcony?

Fighting back her anguish, she described her son’s cries of pain every morning when doctors and nursing staff treated his burns.

“The feeling as a mother when you hear your son in pain… it hurts. I want justice,” she said.

Ms Grech Coldman insisted the authorities needed to take action to ensure that what she feels was gross negligence on the resident’s part, was addressed.

Police on the scene of the incident found that a 39-year-old Italian resident had been barbecuing on his balcony. It is not known whether the authorities are investigating the case, and questions sent yesterday had not been answered by the time of writing.

Ms Grech Coldman, however, said she was surprised that no magisterial inquiry was being held.

“Something has to happen; I don’t think you can scar two children for life without the authorities taking any action,” she said, adding that if the authorities did not press charges, she would take matters into her own hands.

Despite this, Ms Grech Coldman took some minor comfort in knowing that at least her son had not suffered any facial scarring.

The same, however, could not be said for the 10-year-old dancer who was burnt along with her son.

“The other boy next to my son was covered in the same liquid. While my son ran to me and I managed to throw him to the ground and extinguish the flames, the older boy panicked and ran off.

“He was older and it took longer to stop him,” Ms Grech Coldman said.

A young eyewitness, who was on the stage at the time of the incident, explained to this newspaper how the second injured child had been engulfed before him.

Having been burnt slightly himself, the witness said that he had managed to get his shirt off before it hurt him seriously.

“I turned around and I saw [name withheld] covered in fire. He was in sheer panic,” the witness said.

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