A mother in Brooklyn saved four of her children from a blazing fire early yesterday morning by lobbing them out of a second-floor window onto a quilt clutched by five neighbors below.

Awakened at about 2:30 a.m. by screams, neighbors rushed to the aid of Nabila Nazli and her five children at Bay 50th Street in Coney Island as flames engulfed the family’s second-floor home.

Witnesses said Ms. Nazli, 38, dropped four of her children, including twin 1-month-old boys whom she had wrapped in blankets, onto the makeshift security net held by the neighbors.

After tossing the children out the window, Ms. Nazli was trapped inside the burning room with her 5-year-old daughter, Naseer Nimrah, who was too afraid to jump out the window, a witness said. The mother and daughter passed out in the smoke and flames. Firefighters arrived on the scene about 10 minutes later and broke through a second-floor window and pulled the two out, witnesses said.

All six were rushed to Coney Island Hospital early yesterday morning and treated for smoke inhalation. Ms. Nazli was later transferred to the hyperbaric center at Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx. Both Ms. Nazli and her 5-year-old daughter sustained severe burns, according to the husband and father, Mohammad Naseer.

A neighbor across the street, Thomas Gonzalez, said he heard screams and rushed over to help.

“I saw the woman dangling from the window with her baby,” Mr. Gonzalez said. “The first thing I thought was to throw the babies down.”

Mr. Gonzalez, a maintenance worker at Trump Village in Manhattan, said he ran over to the building and tried unsuccessfully to break down the front door.

“I used a baseball bat and a sledge hammer,” Mr. Gonzalez said. “Then I started breaking down the front wall with the sledge.”

It took about 25 minutes until Ms. Nazli could be persuaded to drop the four children to safety, he said.

According to a spokesman for the New York City Fire Department, the fire was likely caused by a faulty extension cord.

At 2:58 a.m., members of the New York City Fire Department secured a ladder to the building and smashed through the bedroom window of the second-floor apartment.

“Fire was blowing out the window,” a 13-year veteran firefighter from Ladder 166 in Coney Island, Bob Treiland, said. “It was actually causing the building next door to light on fire. The siding was melting.”

Mr. Treiland and another firefighter, Matt Reno, were the first to step foot into the bedroom of the blazing apartment. Mr. Treiland said he found Ms. Nazli lying unconscious under debris and then located the 5-year-old girl and passed her through the shattered window, while Mr. Reno and other firefighters removed Ms. Nazli down the stairs.

Nine firefighters were hurt during the blaze, including Mr. Reno. None of the injuries were considered to be serious.

Mr. Naseer, a limousine driver who was working when the fire sparked, spoke to reporters about his wife’s heroics yesterday near their charred home in Coney Island.

“Sometimes she said to me: ‘If you ever get in trouble, you will see how brave I am,'” Mr. Naseer said. “She put herself in danger, and I am very thankful to my wife.”

Mr. Naseer stood clutching a photo album that he said was one of the few valuables salvaged from the scorched apartment. The family moved to New York from Pakistan about seven years ago and moved into the apartment about two months ago.

“Nothing is lost because my family survived,” he said. “These are the unimportant things that I can make again.”

The building’s landlord, Zarqa Quasmi, who lives in the first-floor apartment, said she heard a blast and then looked up out her window and noticed the flames.

“I knocked on every door screaming,” Ms. Ouasmi said.

Before leaving to see his injured wife at Jacobi Medical Center, Mr. Naseer sang the praises of his neighbors. “I am thankful to God that they saved the lives of my family.”