CAIRO — The Coptic church was so close to the apartment where a family of believers lived in a working-class neighborhood of Cairo that the parents couldn’t imagine anything happening to their three children when they walked together to attend Mass or school there.
But that sense of security came crashing down around the family on Sunday, when Edward el-Sayed made his way into the smoking ruins of the Abu Sefein Church and found his children curled up motionless behind the altar — three of the 41 victims of a devastating fire.
Fadi el-Sayed, a boy aged 10, and his sisters, Jumana el-Sayed, 9, and Mary el-Sayed, 5, were among 18 children killed in the fire, which raced through the modest church in the densely packed neighborhood after a generator exploded, said the children’s aunt, Mary Hosni.
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“My darlings hid behind the altar because they were scared,” said Ms. Hosni, 27, speaking outside a wake for the children in a church hall on Monday. “They were waiting for someone to save them.”
The children’s mother, Huweida Hosni, sat at the wake with her eyes closed and her head back against the wall as a priest spoke about the children returning to God. Her surviving child, a 16-year-old girl, held onto her mother’s arm.
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Mary Hosni, a college student, said neither of the parents had been at the Mass on Sunday but that the children went almost every day to the church, which also housed a community center where Mary attended day care.
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She showed a photo of her nephew, posing with a serious expression on his face in what seemed to be new clothes. “He loved to draw,” she said. One of her nieces, wearing a big smile, twirled in a black and white skirt.
“They were very quiet kids — like angels,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “They loved to pray. The two girls loved to help their father and bring him things.”
The Rev. Moussa Ibrahim, a spokesman for the church, said all of the children who died on Sunday were between 5 and 13 years old. He said the fire originated with an electrical generator used at the church, which like many Coptic houses of worship, was in poor repair, according to witnesses. He said he could not provide further details about the blaze while the fire was under investigation.