A HAULIER who saved a baby girl and her mother after a fire-raising attack on the block of flats where they lived played down his bravery yesterday.

Jim Gunning, 46, said he did only what ''anyone else would have done'' when he helped the mother and daughter and an elderly woman escape the tenement fire in Springburn, Glasgow.

The blaze was started by vandals on the ground floor of the block on Monday morning. Thick smoke quickly engulfed the tenement, trapping Mrs Fatima Abdulle, 37, a Somalian asylum seeker, and Amina, her four-month-old baby, in their third-floor flat in Eldervale Street.

Mr Gunning, who has three children, persuaded her to drop the baby 30ft. He caught the child, who was unhurt, and then broke Mrs Abdulle's fall, although she broke her ankles and a bone in her back.

Mr Gunning, who went to work at Highland Haulage in Queenslie after the rescue without saying anything, said: ''I only did what anybody would have done. The mother was a real hero. She refused to do anything to help herself until she knew her baby was OK.''

He and another unnamed man also saved an elderly woman trapped in the blaze.

The pensioner, who asked not to be named, said that smoke prevented her leaving her flat by the front door.

She called to Mr Gunning and the other man, who pulled a window off its hinges to reach the pensioner, who is suffering from cancer, and pull her to safety. She was unhurt.

Mrs Abdulle is being treated in the Royal Infirmary where hospital staff describe her condition as ''stable''. Amina is staying with her father Mohamud, 49, at the flat.

Strathclyde Police are still looking for the vandals who started the fire.