Seven-year-old Abdul-Hakeem Khalaf’s wide, slightly askew grin is beautiful enough, distracting from the disfiguring facial injuries left from a bombing in his hometown of Fallujah, Iraq.

“I’m happy because I’m going to have a new look,” he said Sunday through an interpreter, shortly after arriving in Pittsburgh for reconstructive surgery. (more…)

An Iraqi boy whose face was maimed after a U.S. air strike in 2004 is now in Pittsburgh for reconstructive surgery. (Watch Video Clip.)

Abdul Hakim Ismael Hussein, 8, was blinded in one eye and suffered injuries to his jaw and cheek, after the explosion near his family’s home in Fallujah.

“There are tens of thousands of Abdul Hakims,” said Cole Miller, from No More Victims, an organization that helps injured Iraqi children receive donated medical care in the U.S. (more…)

A terrible accident in Iraqi sends a small Iraqi boy to Pittsburgh for recovery. (Watch video clip.) He lost an eye in a bombing in Fallujah and now eight-year-old Abdul Hakim Ismael Hussein has been brought here to get medical attention.

Abdul arrived in Pittsburgh yesterday with his father in a trip arranged by the group “No More Victims.”

Right now, he is staying with a woman who volunteered to house him. (more…)

Interview with NMV founder Cole Miller and volunteer Chad Hetman talk with KDKA’s Jennifer Antkowiak. Watch the video.

One question stands between a 7-year-old Iraqi war victim and reconstructive surgery in Pittsburgh that could bring him a more normal life: How can his sponsors raise their half of the hospital bill when there’s no way of knowing how high that bill will run?

The child, Abdul Hakim Ismael, was wounded last year in the city of Fallujah. His family said he was hit by fire from an American air strike, leaving the left side of his face severely disfigured — blinded in one eye with damaged eye lid, socket, jaw and cheek, making it difficult for him to eat.

An organization called No More Victims is trying to make Hakim the fourth child it brings to the United States for specialized medical care not available in war-torn Iraq. (Two children have been treated in California and Texas, and a third is slated for care in Florida.) Dan Kovalik, a Pittsburgh lawyer with the United Steelworkers and a volunteer for the organization, approached a local surgeon for her help. (more…)

First, there are the children Mary Kay McNeil sings with: kids in Seattle schools and in choirs who infuse their own ideas into the lyrics of songs about peace and friendship.

And now there are the children that the choirs will sing for: among them, Abdul Hakeem Ismael, age 7, and Alaa’ Khalid Hamida, age 3. (more…)