A teenager says he feels lucky to be alive after he and three friends escaped a house blaze thought to have been started by a petrol bomb.

Joel Ellis, 16, saw flames shooting through the door of the end-of-terrace house he was sharing with two of his brothers and a friend - all aged 15 to 18 - in Parsons Close, St Leonards.

He was downstairs but he quickly woke the others, who were sleeping upstairs. They jumped from first-floor windows following the suspected arson attack at 4am today.

Firefighters found Joel's Staffordshire bull terrier Kissy dead in one of the upstairs bedrooms.

Hastings College bricklaying student Joel said: "I was sleeping downstairs when I heard a massive bang. I jumped up and saw flames by the doorway.

"Smoke started pouring in so I went upstairs and told the rest of the lads to get out.

"Luckily we all did but God knows what could have happened had I not woken up. I'm still shaking now."

Scenes of crime officers were this morning hunting for clues. One theory is that a petrol bomb was thrown at the property.

Fire officials said the house had two smoke detectors but they either had dead batteries or failed to work properly.

Sub Officer Colin Doherty, of Bohemia fire station, Hastings, said: "Had the boys been a bit younger then I think we would have been looking at four deaths.

"They really were lucky, particularly as the smoke detectors didn't work."

Most of the ground floor of the house was destroyed in the fire and the first floor was smoke-damaged.