It seems it is a violent movement and they have seen things before that set them off’ said Dr Ribas

It seems it is a violent movement and they have seen things before that set them off,’ said Dr Ribas. But if you suddenly raise your arm most of them will run and hide. Other children have lost arms or legs or suffered head wounds.Beata Ouzimana, 14, sits on her bed, smiling when spoken to, with her hands under the stumps of her two legs amputated just below the knees. Doctors say despite rumours of booby-traps all they see are typical mine injury cases. ‘People returning home must pass through areas where there were battles and run into mines,’ Dr Ribas said ‘The basic treatment for mine injuries is amputation.

We try to be conservative and keep as much as we can but sometimes you have to take both legs off a little girl.’The King Faisal’s surgical ward is packed with 150 casualties, including 40 mine victims Two girls have had both legs amputated. It’s the ones standing behind other people or just outside the zone that we receive,’ Dr Ribas said.The mines are left from three months of war between the Tutsi-dominated Rwandese Patriotic Front and the former government army. Many are children.Four were brought in together on Tuesday including one girl who later died of wounds to her abdomen.’If you are within the killing zone of a mine, we won’t see you here There won’t be anything left. Dr Ribas, a Brazilian with Medecins Sans Frontieres- Holland, said the King Faisal had received three or four mine casualties each day since fighting stopped in Kigali on 4 July. Her sister, Bontemps Marie-France, sits at her bedside and speaks for her. Asked what she would do now that Grace was hurt and they had lost their parents, she said: ‘We must go home.’Grace is from Rwanda’s Tutsi minority but civilians from each side of the country’s ethnic conflict find that coming home after three months of war and massacre only brings more danger. She lost her sight and we have stitched up her feet and done reconstructive surgery on the tendons,’ he added.Grace, lying in bed in the same pink and blue frock she was wearing when the mine exploded, has not spoken since then.

We’ve kept her awake for two nights to gauge her reactions but she seems normal for now,’ said Dr Riccardo Ribas at Kigali’s King Faisal hospital.’It looks like the piece of the mine is lodged either in her eye or nearby. On Monday, playing near her home which she shares with her 14-year-old sister and three brothers in the Kaciyru district of the quiet capital, Grace stepped on an anti-personnel mine.
It exploded, sending a sliver of shrapnel through her left eye and slashing her Achilles tendons to shreds at her ankles ‘There appears to be no brain damage. KIGALI – Seven-year-old Grace Berwa returned in peace to her home in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, a month ago after fleeing massacres that killed her mother and father. Herbert Schnoor, interior minister of North-Rhine Westphalia, said the action plan was agreed in a meeting between police and state and federal governments a week ago Reuter. BONN – German police are co-ordinating action to prevent far-right extremist rallies planned this weekend on the anniversary of the death of Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess. On the Italian holiday island of Sardinia, hundreds of firemen and volunteers battled to control two big brush fires.

Fires also raged on the neighbouring French island of Corsica Agencies. THE HAGUE – Caretaker Finance Minister Wim Kok moved a step closer to forming a new Dutch government yesterday, 100 days after inconclusive general elections, when he won approval for a draft coalition accord. After three months of political horse-trading, Mr Kok’s Labour party, the conservative Liberals and centre-left D66 are on the verge of a novel coalition Reuter. MADRID – Twenty thousand people were evacuated yesterday as fires raged in the Paterna region near Valencia, on Spain’s Mediterranean coast, and new forest fires were reported in Catalonia and Andalusia. ROME – The Quirinale Palace, built as a summer retreat for Popes and now the seat of Italy’s president, will open to the public on Sundays from October Visitors will be admitted free Reuter. Dagestan officials have cancelled bus services to neighbouring Azerbaijan and the Chechen republic and limited air and rail services to and from the largely Muslim region.