Lebanese footballer Celine Haidar was getting ready to fulfilling her dream of enjoying for the nationwide ladies’s crew when catastrophe struck.
A devastating Israeli airstrike left the 19-year-old in a medically induced coma, simply as her profession was about to take off.
When full-scale battle erupted in September, Haidar’s household was amongst greater than one million folks pressured to flee south Beirut and different Hezbollah strongholds as Israeli bombs pounded the area.
“But Celine had to come back to south Beirut for her studies and training,” her father, Abbas Haidar, instructed Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“She would leave the house after evacuation calls were issued or bombing intensified, then she’d come back home at night to sleep,” he stated.
Now, she is the newest athlete to grow to be a casualty of Israeli strikes, which already pressured the Lebanese Football Association to postpone all home soccer competitions indefinitely.
On Saturday, her father referred to as to warn her of latest evacuation orders revealed by the Israeli army on-line, and she or he left the home.
But quickly after, “my wife called to tell me Celine was in the hospital,” he stated.
She had been severely wounded in an Israeli strike on her house neighborhood of Shiyah, because the air power pounded Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Cracked cranium
Footage of Haidar mendacity unconscious on the bottom, her face lined in blood whereas a younger man beside her cried in ache, took Lebanese social media by storm.
“The strike was close, and she was hit in the head,” her mom, Sanaa Shahrour, instructed AFP. “My daughter has a brain hemorrhage, her skull is cracked.”
She stated her daughter had despatched her a message asking her to arrange her favourite dish, however “an hour later, her friend called to say she had been wounded.”
“My daughter is a heroine,” she stated, her eyes purple with tears. “She’s strong. She will get back up and play again.”
“She dreamt of competing abroad. She said she wanted to be like Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi… She wanted to be a star and for everyone to talk about her.”
“Now everyone is talking about her because she was wounded in a war she has nothing to do with,” she stated.
“She has beautiful dreams,” she stated, however “they killed her dream.”
‘A fighter’ on the pitch
Haidar was a pillar of her membership, Beirut Football Academy (BFA), which received the Lebanese Women’s Football League final season with out dropping a single level and was set to put on the captain’s armband this season.
The midfielder was additionally a part of the nationwide ladies’s Under-18 crew that received the 2022 West Asian Football Federation championship.
Now, she is in a medically induced coma, crew supervisor Ziad Saade stated.
“The doctors are following her very closely,” her father instructed AFP from Saint George Hospital in Beirut, the place his daughter is being handled.
“But her injuries are serious. We hope she will gradually heal,” he stated with tears in his eyes.
“We’re paying the price for something that’s not our fault.”
Lebanese authorities say greater than 3,544 folks have been killed since Israel began its rampage on Lebanon in October final yr, with most deaths recorded since Tel Aviv stepped up its marketing campaign in September.
“On the pitch, she’s a fighter. She was the link between defense and attack,” coach Samer Barbary stated as he and teammates visited her on the hospital.
“She is an exceptional girl and an excellent player.”
Source: www.dailysabah.com