ALI Ismaeel Abbas, 12, was fast asleep when war shattered his life.

A missile obliterated his home and most of his family, leaving him orphaned, badly burned - and blowing off both his arms.

With tears running down his face he asked: "Can you help get my arms back? Do you think the doctors can get me another pair of hands? If I don't get a pair of hands I will commit suicide.

"I wanted to be an army officer when I grow up but not any more. Now I want to be a doctor - but how can I? I don't have hands."

Lying in a Baghdad hospital, an improvised metal cage over his chest to stop his burned flesh touching the bedclothes, he said: "It was midnight when the missile fell on us. My father, my mother and my brother died. My mother was five months pregnant.

"Our neighbours pulled me out and brought me here unconscious.

"Our house was just a poor shack. Why did they want to bomb us?"