Two months old, Baby Mais, was stabbed by her mother, who then tried to kill herself in a desperate bid to end their nightmare existence in Syria.The traumatised mother was already grieving the deaths of her husband and two sons when she launched her attack.Little Mais was knifed in the stomach and survived, while her mother was treated for her injuries and arrested.
Medics say the woman is one of ten attempted suicides in the pas fortnight alone by mothers “engulfed with guilt” that they cannot protect their children.UNICEF’s Syrian representative Hanaa Singer,through tears, revealed the baby’s ordeal and spelled out the horrific reality faced by Aleppo’s 250,000 inhabitants.
Hanaa said:
“The mother said killing her baby and sending her to heaven was better than the hell they were living in.
“It’s a mental breakdown. I can’t talk about it without crying, without being very emotional.
“I went to the children’s ward, in the incubator area, and this doctor just put this gorgeous girl in my hands, she was only two months old.
“She had a wound in her tummy because her mother had stabbed her after birth.
“The family had been displaced five times in three years, she lost both her sons and her husband in the war recently and in the end she just couldn’t cope.
“But holding that baby showed me the power of resilience, the power of life. It shows the power of life always beats cruelty.There is always hope, this beautiful, gorgeous baby is healing and surviving very well. The doctors performed a miracle.”Daily Mirror