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Frustrated Afghan women turn to self-immolation
With the make-up still just about visible around her eyes, Rahima's body lay alone in a room at the main hospital in Afghanistan's Herat province. The rest of her was barely recognisable as the teenage girl she had been the day before.
Married and aged just 16, she died after deliberately setting herself on fire. The anguished cries of her family were audible outside as they waited to confront her husband's relatives.
"More than 90 per cent of burn cases are burnt on over 50 per cent of their body," Dr Mohammed Aref Jalali explained.
Since the fall of the Taliban regime, self-immolation has become a well established phenomenon in Herat, with women and girls pouring petrol over themselves in acts of protest and despair arising from family disputes. Men have begun to follow suit, albeit in far smaller numbers.