12 year old girl in Lebanon blown to pieces after finding booby-trapped doll left for her by terrorist IDF

The Daily Orient

Imperceptibly, the thumb moved. Mariam Boustani, a 9-year-old Lebanese girl, had her right hand shredded by a toy bomb found in a camp in South Lebanon. Today, she hopes to recover her little finger and return to school.

‘It was a large apple-green plastic jeep, with six big black wheels. My brother Ali (8) found it while picking thyme with me near the village and gave it to me,’ Mariam told AFP.

The girl returned home last Friday after 25 days in the hospital. She said she ‘felt like an electric shock’ before the toy exploded as she arrived in front of her family home in the village of Deir Aames.

With her hand in tatters and injuries to her legs and abdomen, she was evacuated to Najm Hospital in Tyre, where she underwent five surgeries.

‘By gluing the pieces together, we first managed to save half of her palm,’ Dr. Jawad Najm told AFP. ‘Fifteen days later, after two operations to suture the nerves and arteries, we saved her thumb, then we performed skin grafts on her legs. Mariam needs a final operation in two weeks to try to revive her remaining finger,’ he said.

‘I was promised that I’ll be able to hold a pencil when the bandage is removed. School is what I love most,’ said the pale, wide-eyed girl, her hair hidden under a scarf.

‘Mariam has always been one of the top students in her class,’ her mother confided. ‘Ever since she found out she lost three fingers, she can’t stop crying.’

Yet she was luckier than other children who have handled the booby-trapped toys found over the years in South Lebanon, well beyond the Israeli-occupied zone.

There are no statistics, but the examples are numerous.

The Lebanese army regularly warns of ‘suspicious items’ that it accuses the Israeli air force of dropping over the region, particularly after the offensives of July 1993 and April 1996, which has left 350 dead.

An officer with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) told AFP that these objects were mostly dropped by helicopter. ‘It can be a toy or made to appear like an ordinary rock,’ he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Directly targeted by these comments, as only Israeli aircraft are authorized to fly over the area, the Israeli army denies having dropped these toy bombs.

‘The IDF categorically rejects these despicable accusations. ‘We do not resort to such methods, and on the contrary, we do everything possible not to harm innocent civilians, especially children,’ a military spokesman in Tel Aviv assured AFP.

Over the past twelve months, Hezbollah has announced the discovery of six such devices. ‘They were all brightly colored: a golden egg, fluorescent yellow cones, a ‘Snoopy’ dog, and a talking doll that was supposed to explode when the cord was pulled,’ according to the military group, which carries out most of the attacks against the occupied zone.

But it was children who found a flashlight near Jibchit in December 1991. Overjoyed, they took it back to their family’s butcher’s shop, where it exploded, killing Abed and Abbas Nahhal, brothers aged 10 and 11, and seriously injuring two other children.

Another booby-trapped flashlight, discovered in a wooded area in Aïtit on November 21, caused third-degree burns to the hands and legs of 12-year-old Ali Mohsen.

Others did not survive, like Khadije Mouzannar, a twelve-year-old girl whose body was torn to pieces two years ago in Sawwaneh, seconds after she shouted, ‘I found a doll!’