Three children are in hospital after their father poured petrol over them and set the fuel on fire.
One of them, a four-year-old girl, is in a critical condition with serious burns. It's understood the other two children, aged six and seven, have less serious injuries.
Neighbours said the father of the three children seemed to become more and more agitated during the course of Friday evening, first threatening to injure himself and his wife before turning on his children.
One neighbour said that around midnight the man's wife ran into the middle of Holbeck Street in Doubleview, crying out for help.
"She came out and was screaming. I went into the house and he came at me with a knife. I hit him with a fire extinguisher and knocked him down.
"But he got right back up again and came at me again so I grabbed him by the throat and put him down again, The whole place stank of petrol," he said.
Another neighbour rushed to help the injured children and administered first aid until paramedics arrived.
Witnesses say the behaviour of the father became more unpredictable and extreme over the course of several hours.
"He came down around 6pm like he usually does with his six pack and his smokes, but he wasn't the same man that I knew.
"I kept telling him to calm down but he put his head down on the dining room table and started head-butting it," she said.
Neighbours described hearing screams and threats coming from the house in the hours leading up to midnight.
They say the man threatened to cut himself, then threatened to burn his wife and finally his children.
"All the time his wife was shouting and begging him not to hurt anyone but eventually she came running out and shouted at me to call the police, and then I heard the fire alarm going off," said the woman.
The neighbour added that she couldn't understand how the man ended up turning on his children.
"He's loud and dominant but he loves those kids. He has their names tattooed on his neck and the little one, the one who was worst injured, followed him around like a shadow."
Police have charged a 43-year-old man with causing aggravated grievous bodily harm and two counts of attempting to cause grievous bodily harm.
A spokeswoman for Princess Margaret Hospital said one of the children was in critical but stable condition while the other two were in a stable condition.