Bonus - Surgeons rebuild faces and lives of terror victims

By Mike Pflanz in Kitgum

Villagers disfigured by rebels terrorising northern Uganda have for the first time undergone plastic surgery to reconstruct their faces.

Sabina Abwo cradles her son as she recovers from plastic surgery.

Hundreds of civilians have been attacked by the Lord's Resistance Army during a guerrila war now entering its third decade.
It is the same group that shot dead Steve Willis, the British manager of a chain of backpackers' lodges, in November.

The rebels - many of them kidnapped children - slice off lips, ears, fingers and breasts to cow the rural population into submission.
Now some of their victims can eat, drink, talk and smile again after being surgically given new lips.

Sabina Abwo, a 30-year-old mother of seven, is one.
She was collecting firewood near her village when she and her friends, including several young girls, were ambushed in March.

"They put us together in a line then one leader who was about 20 years old took a razor blade from his pocket and gave it to another who was young, about nine, and told him to cut off our ears and lips," she told The Daily Telegraph.
"I was first. Then they did the same to three more and then took away the young girls who we have not seen again."
Sabina's wounds bled for three days while she struggled to reach the nearest hospital, St Joseph's in Kitgum, more than 30 miles from her village.
After two months of treatment, she was discharged but could barely talk, eat or drink until the operation a fortnight ago, conducted by a Dutch surgeon with help from Medicines Sans Frontiers.
Hers was one of an initial 14 reconstructive procedures carried out at St Joseph's, a basic missionary hospital in Kitgum, Uganda's northernmost market town.
"Now I will be able to go out to the market and people will not look at me so much," Sabina said, trying to smile as she shielded her surgical wounds from the dust.

"We selected these first patients based on the fact that their mutilation has made it impossible for them to lead a normal life," said Dr Zeeman.
"You have to realise that it is almost impossible for a person without lips to eat or drink. We want to help this group as quickly as possible."
"It is impossible to overstate the pain these women have been through," said Rosemary Yaya, one of MSF's nurses.