Disabled Yazidi boy abandoned on Mt Sinjar

Left for dead after the refugee exodus from Iraq's harsh Mount Sinjar, a young disabled boy found by Kurdish fighters has been dubbed 'Anonymous' by doctors.

Disabled_abandoned_Yazidi_boy_BBC.jpg

This young boy, no more than 8 years old, was found abandoned and close to death on Mt Sinjar. (BBC)

Doctors have named him 'Anonymous' but no one really knows the name of a young Yazidi boy abandoned and blinded on Mount Sinjar.

No more than eight years of age the paralysed young refugee lay dying alone on a mountain side while thousands of people passed him by in a desperate bid to escape the harsh conditions.

Kurdish fighters found him alone in the desert, where temperatures often reach fifty degrees centigrade.

Doctors believe that as he lay looking into the sweltering sun for more than a day, while his eyes dried out and his corneas became scorched and infected.

He was just hours from death.

"He was in a coma. We could only tell he was alive because of a faint heartbeat," Josef Shokri, a doctor from the Syrian hospital where he has now been taken told British newspaper The Telegraph.

"He lay with his eyes open, without blinking for 24 hours. His cornea is white, making him almost blind. We hope that we will be able to save some of his sight."

Other refugees in Syria have speculated that his mother was no longer strong enough to carry him and was forced to leave him behind to save her other children.  

Such unbearable decisions have been thrust onto the minority Yazidis and other residents of Sinjar province after they fled the invasion by Islamic State.

Mothers who had become separated from their children on the mountain have been visiting the child, after hearing rumours of a lone boy to see if he was their son.

 

 


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2 min read

Published

Updated

By Gary Cox

Source: SBS


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