A mother and her two-year-old son have died in separate hospitals days after a blaze ripped through their home, police said tonight.

Denise Huggins, 38, and her two sons, aged two and 12, were rescued by firefighters from the second floor of their house at Rye Road,

Hastings, after flames tore through the floor below early on Saturday.

All three were initially taken to the town's Conquest Hospital suffering from severe smoke inhalation, but Mrs Huggins was later transferred to the Queen Alexandra Hospital, Cosham, and her younger son to Guy's Hospital in London.

A Sussex Police spokesman said last night that the two-year-old boy and his mother have now died of their injuries.

He added that the fire, which has been investigated by police, is no longer being treated as suspicious.

The spokesman said: "This appears to

have been a tragic accident."

Emergency services were first alerted at 1.30am on Saturday after neighbours saw flames pouring from

a first-floor window

of the three-storey

house.

Two of its five occupants escaped without injury, but the woman and her two sons had to be rescued by firefighters using a turntable ladder.

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