ABU DHABI // The UAE will continue to support two Syrian sisters whose heart-rending story was told on national television a year ago.
Mohammed Al Zaroni, manager of the Emirates Red Crescent’s Dubai branch, said the tragic account of Qatar Al Nada and Noor Al Huda, both under the age of six, was shown on Al Arabiya TV last year.
The girls, cared for by their father as their mother had died the year before, were playing with another child when the road next to their house in the western city of Al Qusayr, near Homs, was shelled.
Their playmate was killed and both girls severely wounded.
As images of the shelling were shown on television, the father was trying to get the girls to a hospital across the border in Lebanon.
“Immediate surgery was necessary at the nearest hospital,” a doctor told the ERC.
“To get them out from Al Qusayr took around five hours, which meant they lost a lot of blood.”
When the Emirati businessman Khalaf Al Hantour heard the story he immediately made arrangements with the ERC for the girls’ treatment, which he funded.
Fortunately the ERC had officials there, including the former chairman Ahmed Al Mazroui.
After the girls were transferred to a hospital in Tripoli, the ERC took them to the American University Hospital in Beirut, one of the best in the country.
Mr Al Hantour funded six operations and with his aid, the girls and their father have been able to find refuge in Lebanon.
Mr Al Zaroni said that when the girls turned 16, the ERC would pay for plastic surgery to conceal scarring and deformities.
