SUKKUR: Two toddlers died of suffocation after they got themselves locked up in their family’s car parked near their house in Gulshan-i-Iqbal locality of Old Sukkur for several hours on Saturday night.

The bereaved families said that Ali Raza, 2, son of Sajid Ali Qureshi, and his cousin, Alisha, 4, daughter of Shahid Ali Qureshi, while playing near the house got into the car. The auto-lock doors of the car could not be unlocked by them and they remained trapped in the vehicle for about three hours, they guessed.

They said they had mounted a hectic search for the children after finding them missing but the search ended up in the tragedy when they were seen lying unmoved in the car.

Eventually, they were taken out of it and rushed to a nearby hospital, where doctors declared them dead on arrival.

The dead children’s parents said that they were busy in a soyem gathering for a family member when the toddlers left the house unnoticed with the key of the car and accidentally got themselves locked up in the vehicle.