NEW YORK — Five people, three of them children, were killed in a fire that roared through a house in Queens on Sunday afternoon, city officials said.

The dead were two boys, 2 and 9; a girl, 14; a woman, 20; and a man, 45, officials said. All lived in the home.

“It’s a terrible, tragic loss,’’ Fire Commissioner Daniel A. Nigro said at a news conference with Mayor Bill de Blasio near the burned-out house.

Nigro said a person driving by the house saw flames rising from the first floor to the second and called 911 at 2:36 p.m. He said firefighters arrived four minutes later and found the house consumed by fire.

“These homes were built 97 years ago,’’ Nigro said. “They’re wood-frame homes, and they burn rapidly.’’

He said the cause of the fire was being investigated.

De Blasio, who had spoken at a church earlier in the day, said, “What we do know is five lives are lost, three of them children, an extraordinarily large toll for any fire.’’

A Fire Department official said it was highly unusual for so many people to die in a fire in the middle of the day, when people are typically awake and able to escape.

Nigro said firefighters had found the 2-year-old boy in the attic, where he had been trapped, perhaps with another person.

He said a middle-aged man had leapt or fell from a second-story window. Nigro said the man had survived and had been hospitalized in satisfactory condition.

It was not immediately clear how the victims were related to one another.

New York Times