A woman and her two children suffocated to death after a fire broke out in a three-storeyed building that housed a playschool and a cloth shop in Haryana's Faridabad Saturday, police said.

Police said the fire had broken out in the cloth shop being run from the ground floor of the building at Dabua Colony here, resulting in a thick smoke engulfing the upper floors, where the family lived and ran a playschool.

The cloth shop was being run by the woman's husband.

The playschool was closed due to summer vacations, said area SHO Sandeep Kumar.

The husband had gone to fetch milk from the market when the incident took place, resulting in the death of the woman (28), her daughter (8) and son (5), he said.

"Though the fire did not spread to the upper floors, a thick smoke engulfed the building, choking them to death," he said.

He said the victims were rushed to a hospital but could not be saved.

Kumar said the area where the incident took place had many such buildings, where people ran shops from the ground floor while living on the upper floors.

The preliminary investigation revealed that the fire could have been caused by a short-circuit.

Area residents said dangling wires from electricity poles were an added risk and urged the authorities to fix the problem.

Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar has ordered an inquiry into the incident.

The Haryana government had recently announced a mammoth exercise to inspect coaching centres, schools, colleges, hotels, cinema halls and other commercial buildings across the state to avert a Surat-like fire tragedy, in which at least 22 students were killed.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)