Three men have been found guilty in the UK of the murder of five people in a shop explosion in Leicester.

Shopkeeper Aram Kurd, 34, and his friends Arkan Ali, 37, and Hawkar Hassan, 33 have also been convicted of conspiring to commit insurance fraud.

Their trial heard they caused the blast by dousing the shop basement in petrol.

The trial at Leicester Crown Court also heard that Ali's girlfriend, Viktorija Ijevleva, who worked in the shop, was left to die in the blaze because she had been in on the plot and "knew too much".

"In other words, the devastation that they caused was carried out with the intention to kill," prosecutor David Herbert told the trial.

Ms Ijevleva and Mary Ragoobeer, 46, her teenage sons Shane and Sean, and 18-year-old Leah Beth Reek, who was Shane's girlfriend, were all killed in the blast in February.

The Ragoobeer family lived in the flat above the shop which was completely destroyed.

Mrs Ragoobeer's husband Jose was out at work at the time of the explosion. Their third son survived after he was rescued from the rubble.

The trial heard that the explosion was so loud that people nearby thought a bomb had gone off.

Kurd chose not to give evidence during the trial.

Both Ali and Hassan went into the witness box to claim they did not know of any plan to set fire to the shop.

Mr Herbert told the jury "they are remorseless, callous men dominated by greed, who have proved they're capable of trampling over the boundaries of basic human decency and honesty".