A woman has rescued her four children from a burning building by dropping them from a window.

The family was in a five-storey building in Istanbul's Esenler district when the fire took hold on Wednesday.

As black smoke billowed from the window of their third-floor apartment, bystanders were heard screaming, some of them shouting at her not to drop the children.

The Daily Sabah reported that volunteers had stretched out a blanket as a makeshift net to catch the children as they were dropped out of the window, one by one.

Each child was carried to an ambulance after they landed on the blanket.

A witness told the newspaper: "First, black smoke started to come out. Then, the children started shouting from the windows and we opened the blankets.