'Napalm girl' Kim Phuc receives German prize for peace work Activist honoured decades after she wa

'Napalm girl’ Kim Phuc receives German prize for peace work

Activist honoured decades after she was photographed fleeing naked in Vietnam war

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Kim Phuc, known as the “napalm girl” after a well-known photo of her from the Vietnam war, has received an award in Germany for her work for peace.

Organisers of the Dresden prize say the 55-year-old, who lives in Canada, is being honoured for her support of Unesco and children wounded in war, and for speaking out against violence and hatred. She received €10,000 (£8,800).

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Phuc was nine when a South Vietnamese plane dropped napalm bombs on her village in 1972, believing it harboured North Vietnamese troops. The scene of Phuc running down a road in tears, naked and severely burned was captured by the Associated Press photographer Nick Ut, who won a Pulitzer prize for the image in 1973. Ut, then 21, drove Phuc to hospital where he demanded doctors treat her. “I cried when I saw her running,” said Ut in 2012. “If I don’t help her and if something happened and she died I think I’d kill myself after that.”

Days after the image shocked the world, another journalist found out Phuc had survived. Christopher Wain, a British television journalist, fought to have her transferred to a US-run unit equipped to deal with her severe injuries. “I had no idea where I was or what happened to me,” Phuc said. “I woke up and I was in the hospital with so much pain, and then the nurses were around me. I woke up with a terrible fear.”

Phuc sustained third-degree burns on 30% of her body. She began scar treatment in 2015.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/11/napalm-girl-kim-phuc-prize-peace-work