A FATHER and two children died, and five other children were seriously ill overnight after being contaminated near Cairo by an object described as radioactive. Officials from the electricity ministry and the Atomic Energy Authority of Egypt have since retrieved the undisclosed object from the family home after encasing it in a lead containe. Neighboring homes in the village of Mit Halfa, 10 kilometers north of Cairo, were evacuated overnight on Monday but the authorities there insisted there was no danger to residents. The family had inadvertantly taken the object home with them from a sandy area where they had found building materials they planned to use to make home improvements. The father, Fadl Hassan Fadl, a 61-year-old agricultural worker, died Monday night on the way to a hospital while his teenage son died en route to a medical center in Cairo, police said. A teenage daughter died early on Tuesday in a Cairo hospital where the five remaining children are in a serious condition.