NEW YORK — Hundreds of mourners prayed over small, simple caskets at a tear-filled funeral yesterday for the nine children and a woman killed when a fire raced through their extended family’s home in the Bronx.The children’s fathers, one who lost his wife and all his children, joined Muslim prayers for the dead during a brief service. One tiny coffin held the bodies of his seven-month-old twins, Sise and Harouna Soumare.

“We prayed on the bodies for the victims and the families, and then we prayed for everybody,” said Imam Konate Souleimane. “It is not only about Africa, it is about the world.”

“It was really something. I don’t know how to describe it,” he said. “People crying, making prayers, giving donations.”

Outside, so many people arrived to remember the victims that mosque leaders covered the pavement with a blue tarp to give Muslims a place to kneel in prayer. Those who didn’t fit on the tarps placed prayer rugs on the street or knelt on newspapers.

Neighbours and supporters gathered behind barricades across the street, and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Mayor Michael Bloomberg visited the mosque to meet with the grieving families.

“They’re all children,” a sobbing Fatoumata Sylla said as the hearses passed.

“They didn’t do anything in life. They didn’t see anything. They didn’t do anything to God,” said Sylla, a Malian who said she knew the family. “Everybody has to go, but it’s too early for them.”

The Soumare twins, two siblings and their mother were to be flown to the parents’ native Mali in West Africa for burial.

Their family shared the three-story home a few blocks from Yankee Stadium with the family of Moussa Magassa, who lost five children to the fire.

The twins’ father, Mamadou Soumare, was on the job as a cab driver late Wednesday night when his wife called him from the burning house shortly before she died.

His grief was compounded two days later with word that his only surviving child, seven-year-old Hassimi, had also died of complications from smoke inhalation.

Magassa had been on a business trip in his native Mali when he got the news. Family friends said he planned to bury his children at a Muslim cemetery in New Jersey after the service. Supporters say both men found strength in their religion.

Authorities believe the fire started with a space heater in the home shared by 22 people, 17 of the children.

The surviving victims were improving, hospital officials said. The condition of six-year-old Kadiatou Magassa was upgraded to good yesterday, Jacobi Medical Center spokeswoman Michael Heller said. Kadiatou had been in critical condition earlier. At Lincoln Medical Center, five-year-old Hatouma Magassa and Assia Magassa, 23, were upgraded to fair condition.

The government of Mali also has offered support to the families. On Sunday, Mali’s foreign minister, Moctar Ouane, thanked New Yorkers on behalf of Mali’s president, Amadou Toumani Toure.

“The people of Mali are deeply touched by the gestures of solidarity and compassion,” he said.