WORLD
BANGALORE, India — A bright-eyed Indian girl born with four arms and four legs made her first public appearance today since surgeons removed the extra limbs in a 24-hour operation.
Swathed in blankets and lying on her father's lap, the 2-year-old girl, named Lakshmi, appeared healthy and alert. Both of her legs were in casts while her arms were free.
Lakshmi's doctors were encouraged by her progress.
Lakshmi was born joined at the pelvis to a "parasitic twin" that stopped developing in the womb. The surviving fetus absorbed the limbs, kidneys and other parts of the undeveloped twin. The extra limbs led some people in her rural village to revere her as an incarnation of the four-armed goddess she was named after.
Lakshmi will need further treatment and possible surgery for clubbed feet before she will be able to walk.
SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq — Turkish helicopter gunships attacked abandoned villages inside Iraq today, Iraqi officials said, the first such airstrike since border tensions have escalated in recent months.It also was the first major Turkish action against Kurdish rebels since Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan met President Bush in Washington earlier this month.Col. Hussein Tamir, an Iraqi Army officer who supervises border guards, said the airstrikes occurred before dawn on abandoned villages near Zakhu, an Iraqi Kurdish town near the border with Turkey. There were no casualties, he said.A spokesman for the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, corroborated Tamir's account.
