Young Syrian refugee pictured using tin cans for legs ‘will walk’ again

[Ulquiorra]

A YOUNG Syrian girl pictured shuffling around on prosthetic legs made from sardine cans will walk again after heartbroken doctors invited her to Turkey for medical treatment.

Maya Mohammad Ali Merhi, 8, and her father were born without legs, a condition called congenital amputation, the cause of which is unknown.

But her father couldn’t afford real prosthetics so made his daughter a pair out of tin cans filled with cotton and scraps of cloth so she could move round the camp for displaced refugees in the Syrian province of Idlib.

The heartbreaking footage shows father and daughter side-by-side as he explains how he made the ‘legs’.

But she has since been invited for life-changing medical treatment in Istanbul.

Prosthetics specialist Dr Mehmet Zeki Culcu vowed: "Maya will walk, God willing, in three months time."

"We have been contacted by people all over the world who want to make the donation. But this issue is closed and I will take on the cost."

Mohammad - who will also be given new legs - said:

"It's more important that she can walk so that she is autonomous. It would be like a new life for us.

"I dream of seeing her walk, going to school and back without suffering," he added.

According to Syria Appeal, there are more than 13 million people in the country who desperately need aid - of these more than five million are children.

Camps, similar to the one Maya is living in, are 'home' to around three million people, but they often don't have any access to humanitarian aid.

Many more have attempted to flee the country and headed to nearby Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon.