Guardian readers fund life-changing surgery for Somali boy injured in US airstrike

Abdiqadir Salah and his mother, Marian Haji Abdi Guled. ‘I didn’t know people like this existed,’ she says of the people who raised the money for her son’s surgery. Photograph: Mohamed Gabobe

On the rickshaw ride to the hospital, Marian Haji Abdi Guled felt a mixture of joy and apprehension: the day they had been waiting for had finally arrived.

Almost a year earlier, her then seven-year-old son, Abdiqadir Salah, had been seriously injured, alongside his two siblings, in what a Guardian investigation found was a US drone strike on the village of Jamaame in Somalia that killed at least 12 civilians, including eight children.

Doctors feared that without an operation to remove them, the boy would lose his ability to walk, but Guled had no money for an operation. For 10 months, the family had languished in Mogadishu with growing expenses and no income – unable to afford surgery, but unwilling to let the boy return to the village without it.

After the investigation, which told the story of Guled and other civilians affected by the attack, a group of Guardian readers from across the globe fundraised for Abdiqadir’s surgery and recovery.

Within a few hours, enough money was raised to cover his treatment and rehabilitation, as well as any medical expenses and treatment for her other two children, who sustained less extensive injuries.

“I was so happy when I found out that Guardian readers raised the money needed for my son’s surgery. I didn’t know people like this existed,” Guled said.

“The people who contributed to the surgery – I really appreciate their support and how they stood by our family when we needed it the most.”

On a Saturday morning in September, Guled waited anxiously as Abdiqadir was finally taken for surgery at Kaafi hospital in Mogadishu.

“Other patients were taken into surgery after him and came out before him – so I worried maybe something went wrong,” she said. “I got to a point where I knocked on the operating room door asking if my son was still alive, then was held back by other patients.”

Finally, her son emerged. Doctors told Guled the surgery had been successful, but complex. While the first two pieces of shrapnel from the missile had been successfully removed, taking out the final piece was considered too risky, possibly resulting in paralysis, so they concluded that it was safer to leave it and monitor his condition.

When the Guardian visited Abdiqadir a few weeks later, he appeared bright, energised and visibly happy. “I have one piece of metal still in me, and if they touch it, I might become paralysed,” the seven-year-old said. “[But] I don’t have any problem with the last piece of metal in my body, because I’m no longer in pain.”