Apartment blaze kills 8 in Chicago

Eight people, including six children, were killed after a fire tore through a two-storey home on Sunday (local time).

"We have not had this in many, many, many years -- this amount of fatalities and injuries in one location," CNN quoted city's Fire Commissioner Jose Santiago, as saying.

The fire commissioner lauded the quick thinking of a woman who smelled the fire and saved a lot of lives in the neighbourhood.

"She had just gotten home from work. She smelled it. I think she saw it. And then she started immediately knocking on doors, ringing doorbells," Santiago said.

The fire department informed that two children were rushed to the hospital in very critical condition, while a firefighter was hospitalised.

Although the officials did not reveal the cause of the fire, the city's building inspection records highlighted two code violations during its most recent inspection in June, one of them being an "extension cord at rear exterior of fron [sic] building feeding rear Building (DANGEROUS AND HAZARDOUS."

Santiago said that no smoke detectors were found in the affected home.