The eight-year-old girl brought over from Tripoli for treatment two weeks ago died on Sunday after succumbing to her terrible injuries.

The little body of Ritag Habib was flown to Tripoli for burial yesterday evening, accompanied by her father Idris, who was by her bedside at Mater Dei Hospital when she died of multi-organ failure at about 9 p.m.

Last month, just two weeks before the death of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, Ritag was playing with her siblings in the hallway of their home in Sabha, southwest of Tripoli, when a rocket propelled grenade smashed through the roof and the blast sliced off her abdominal wall.

She was flown to Malta with her father on October 21 to receive further treatment at Mater Dei’s ITU. The operation to bring the young girl to Malta was coordinated by the Defence Department within the Office of the Prime Minister and arrangements were made by the Health Ministry. Tarek Tarhoumi, who forms part of a team that serves as a go-between for Libyan patients’ relatives, medical staff and OPM, yesterday said the girl had been stable but her condition started to deteriorate on Sunday morning.

Ritag had arrived in Malta with infections and she had to build up her energy after suffering pneumonia. Doctors were eventually looking to prepare her for plastic surgery to rebuild her missing abdominal wall.

However, although medics were hopeful, her condition had remained critical and anaesthetist Simon Paris, who had accompanied the girl on the flight from Libya, had always been reluctant to speak about the girl’s immediate future.

“I cannot think of her future at the moment but all I can say is that in the short-term her condition is stable,” he had said.