A mother told today of the terrifying moment a firebomb exploded outside her home as her two children slept.

Andrea Staplehurst leapt from the sofa bed she shared with her partner and looked out, horrified.

Ms Staplehurst, 25 and now pregnant with her third child, said: "I saw a bright orange flash outside, jumped up and saw the fire.

"All I could think about was the children asleep next door.

"If the flat had been on fire we wouldn't have been able to get to them. They could easily have been killed."

As the smell of smoke and petrol seeped into the room, her partner Paul Kibble looked out of the window and saw a shadowy figure running away.

They both knew who it was - their decision to offer refuge to a vulnerable young mother had come within a whisker of costing them their lives.

Jilted Simon Silk faces a lengthy prison sentence today after pleading guilty at Lewes Crown Court to arson and possessing an explosive.

Silk, 21, of Wish Hill, Eastbourne, was enraged when the couple let his ex-girlfriend, Claire Hughes, 19, stay at their first-floor flat in Whitehawk Way, Brighton, a month after they split.

His anger came to a head on September 26 last year.

After several hours' drinking, Silk filled a large Beck's beer bottle with petrol and stuffed a wick into the neck. His friend, Chris Ovenden, drove him to the Whitehawk estate at about 11pm.

Silk, who had once threatened Miss Hughes he would torch her elderly grandmother's home, lit his home-made petrol bomb and launched it.

The bottle exploded 18in from the living room window.

Had it broken through, the flaming liquid would have doused Ms Staplehurst and Mr Kibble as they lay on their sofa bed under the window.

The attack could have killed them both, leaving their children Tristan, five, and Kyra, two, asleep in a burning building.

Miss Hughes, the mother of Silk's 16-month-old son Scott, had moved out of the flat just two days earlier.

She said: "I never thought Simon would do what he did. He knew I had been sleeping on the sofa bed with Scott so if I had been there he could have killed his own son.

"I felt really guilty when it happened because Andrea and Paul had been so good to me and given me a place to stay."

The arson attack shocked Mr Kibble, although he knew a few days before the bomb attack that Silk had confronted Miss Hughes at their flat and swung an iron bar at the window.

Mr Kibble said: "He is very obsessive and controlling and I knew it would come to a head."

Mr Kibble spotted Silk getting into the car with Ovenden, 27, of Claremont Road, Seaford.

Ms Staplehurst phoned the police and the two men were stopped and arrested shortly afterwards.

Ovenden also faces a possible prison sentence after he was found guilty of aiding and abetting Silk by driving him to and from the scene.