Survivors

South Lebanon

Twenty-one-year-old Rabha Hassa Assad Suyadan stepped on a mine that had been placed in the storage room of her house.

"I thought I had suffered an electric shock when I walked into the storage room to get some food for our goats. The explosion ripped me off my feet and threw me into the yard. Looking down at my legs, I realized that my left foot was missing. At the beginning it did not hurt, but after half an hour I was in terrible pain and fainted."

It took four hours to evacuate her to the nearest hospital: two cars broke down because of the bad roads and the snow. Rabha now lives with her mother.

"Sometimes I feel I have lost everything in my life, that nothing is left, and I start crying. My life has changed. I can no longer work and I have a young son; my husband lives far away in Beirut. My family and neighbours have been very helpful... Now I will try to get a prosthesis. I say to other survivors of mine injuries like myself: we have to keep our hope."

Rabha Hassa Assad Suyadan, 21, South Lebanon