Newsday

There seemed to be no way out for Nabila Mazli and her five children as a fire raced through their Bensonhurst apartment yesterday.

But Mazli, 38, kept her cool, herding all her children into one bedroom of the two-story home and shutting the door. The move gave her enough time to toss four of her children out the second-floor window into the arms of five neighbors holding a quilt.

The fifth child, Nimrah, 5, would not leave her mother, and both were overcome by smoke. Firefighters used a ladder to enter the bedroom window, found them unconscious and rescued them.

The cause of the 2:55 a.m. fire is still being investigated. The blaze left Mazli in critical condition at Jacobi Medical Center with second-degree burns on her hands, face and torso. Nimrah, with second-degree burns on her back and arms, was at the same hospital in critical condition, fire officials said.

"She was totally trapped," firefighter Bob Treiland said. "Every room was totally, and I mean totally, engulfed in flames. Her shutting that door saved her and her children."

The dramatic predawn blaze and rescue awed Mazli's husband, Mohammad Naseer, 50, who raced home from his livery job in Manhattan after getting news of the fire.

"She put her life in danger and she saved the children's lives," Naseer said. "If I am in her place, I could not do that."

Doctors told Naseer that Mazli and Nimrah should survive. His other children, daughter Ishmail, 4, and sons Umer, 10, and 1-month-old twins Mugees and Mubeen, were in stable condition at Coney Island Hospital with less serious injuries.

Twelve firefighters suffered minor injuries, and three families, including Naseer's, were left homeless.

Naseer, clutching an unscathed photo album from his flame-ravaged apartment, said the family will relocate to a relative's Long Island home.

"Nothing lost," he said. "Because my family survive, I lose nothing."

In yesterday's blaze, neighbors dressed in their sleepwear rushed to help.

Thomas Gonzalez, 28, tried to break down the front door with a bat and a sledgehammer, but the door was dead-bolted.

Other neighbors, including one with a quilt, ran to the smoke-filled home where Mazli could be heard screaming.

Gonzalez and John Mirabile, 45 - aided by Mirabile's two children and a cousin - told Mazli, positioned at the bedroom window facing the street, they would catch her children using the quilt. Mazli tossed her newborns first, Mirabile said, then Ishmail and Umer.

Firefighters arrived and knocked down the front door using an ax.

Treiland and firefighter Matt Reno used a ladder to reach the mother and child. "I swept the floor with my hand and came across the body of the mother," said Treiland, a 13-year veteran. "She was face down and unconscious, definitely lifeless."

Treiland said they found Nimrah under the window, stuck between the dresser and the bed.

"The neighbors did a great job," he said. "It was really outstanding."

Matthew Nestel contributed to this story