A woman was rescued by firefighters after she became trapped in a first-floor flat by a fierce blaze.

Another woman reportedly leapt from a window clutching her baby boy before helping three other young children, believed to be pre-school age, to escape from the flat in Squire Green, Girlington, Bradford, yesterday.

The trapped woman was frantically knocking on a window for help when 25 firefighters from Bradford and Fairweath-er Green arrived at about 3pm.

The blaze had swept through the first-floor and ground-floor flats, blocking off the communal stairway and barring any exit before spreading to the roof of a terraced house next door.

Bradford station manager Mick Smith said: "One adult and four children had got out when we arrived.

"The crews went to fight the fire and saw a woman knocking at the window upstairs. She could open the window but the flames were intense in the lower floor and flames were leaping up the outside of the house.

"A team of four fire crews went through the flames to get to her. They put a ladder up the outside of the house and got her down."

Sandra and Paul Yeadon, who live in the neighbouring house with their ten-year-old son, were unable to return there last night as police and fire investigators' inquiries continued.

Mrs Yeadon said: "I had started preparing tea when I heard a smoke alarm. Then I started to smell smoke and realised it was coming from next door.

"I opened the front door and saw a pram on fire in the entrance lobby to the flats - it belongs to the girl in the upstairs flat.

"I knew they were trapped because I could hear the girls in the upper flat screaming 'Please help me'."

Mrs Yeadon, a 43-year-old lecturer, called 999 before leaving her home through the back door.

"The woman who lives in the lower flat had come out and was hysterical," she said.

"I helped her to climb over the fence. When I went to the front of the house the fire brigade had arrived.

"Somehow the children had got out and three of them were being led by my son and some other children away from the house.

"I saw the woman who lives in the flat with her baby in her arms. She had blood on her forehead and was limping. She screamed that someone else was in there."

A spokesman for West Yorkshire Metropolitan Ambulance Service said two adults and three children were taken to Bradford Royal Infirmary although their injuries were not life-threatening.

Police today said they were treating the fire as suspicious and have started an investigation to find out how it was caused.

Mr Smith said: "It will be quite a while before anyone can go back to the house.

"The professionalism of the crews who arrived first on the scene saved this woman's life.

"It was a very intense fire - they were extremely brave."