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Leonard Ncube Victoria Falls Reporter
TWO minor children aged three and nine years watched helplessly as their parents were reduced to ashes after a bolt of lightning struck their kitchen hut in Tsholotsho recently.The two siblings are now traumatised and are now under the custody of their maternal grandmother in the same area.

Tsholotsho District Administrator Nosizi Dube confirmed the incident which occurred in Ntulula area under Chief Mathuphula.

She said the two kids, a boy and a girl, miraculously survived the lightning bolt when they were mysteriously thrown out through the window and escaped without injuries.

The two then witnessed their parents being burn inside the hut.

Shocked villagers told Chronicle that the couple, Nkulumo Ndebele and his wife, Junior Sibanda (ages not given), were having supper together with their two children in their kitchen hut at around 5PM when lightning struck. Unconfirmed reports by villagers are that five cows belonging to the same family were also struck by the same bolt of lightning.

“We are still in shock. We do not even know what to say because such a thing has never happened before. How can children be thrown out through the window and land uninjured?” said a villager who requested anonymity.

The DA who chairs the District Civil Protection Unit said they dispatched a team to assess the situation after receiving a report about the incident.

“A Civil Protection Unit (CPU) team visited the homestead to check on the welfare of the little children. Only the kitchen hut was burnt.
A report that we have compiled for the social welfare department indicates that  the children are traumatised after watching their parents being burnt to death,” she said.

The DA said the remains of the couple were buried last week. “There was nothing to bury. All that was done was to dig a grave on the spot where the hut was and we then buried the ashes,” said Dube.