A man has been found guilty of murdering his neighbours, a mother and her two daughters, who died after a flat fire.

Jamie Barrow admitted starting the fire which killed Fatimah Drammeh, three, Naeemah Drammeh, one, and their mother Fatoumatta Hydara, 28, but denied murder by claiming he was unaware they were home at the time.

However prosecutors told Nottingham Crown Court he would have known they were inside because a pram had been left outside the front door and light was coming from the hallway of the first-floor flat.

The family of his victims said Barrow had been “utterly heartless and cruel” and had caused “a multigenerational trauma that we will never understand”.

In a statement following the verdict on Tuesday, they added: “Words cannot quantify how much our family have suffered because of the horrific actions of one man.

“Neither can we quantify the emotional, psychological, physiological and financial impact of the crime Jamie Barrow committed”.

The 31-year-old, who lived in the neighbouring flat in Fairisle Close, previously pleaded guilty in April to the manslaughter of the trio on 20 November last year in Clifton, Nottingham.

The girls were pronounced dead at hospital shortly after the blaze broke out just after 3am, while their mother died two days later in hospital from smoke inhalation.

The 31-year-old, who admitted he drank “seven or eight” cans of San Miguel lager before the attack, started the fire after pouring petrol through the flat’s letterbox.

Prosecutors said Barrow had a “grievance” over rubbish being left in an alleyway. They said he “did nothing to help” those trapped inside and ignored their screams.

Some members of the victims’ family wept after the verdicts were delivered, while Barrow remained silent.

Ms Hydara’s husband and the girls’ father, Aboubacarr Drammeh, was away on a trip to the USA on the night of the blaze and previously told how he had to identify their bodies in a mortuary on his 40th birthday.

Mr Drammeh said his wife of eight years, a former voluntary worker, had lived a “short but a very beautiful and fulfilling life“, while he described his daughters as “both really happy children”.

The family statement on Tuesday described the girls as “two angels who deserved a beautiful childhood and a full life”.

They added: “Nottingham and the rest of the world have been denied potential future teachers, civil servants, doctors – who knows what they could have been?”

Barrow will be sentenced on Friday.