Child sleepwalks 3km in desert

An Emirati child left her family camp in the heart of Umm Al Quwain desert during the Eid holiday and walked nearly three kilometres to another camp in the middle of night, the Arabic language daily Emarat Alyoum reported on Sunday.

Baina Saeed Al Minhali got out of her bed, slipped out of the tent and sleep-waked aimlessly away from the camp until she reached another camp known as “the Bedouin Camp”, nearly three kilometers away from her family’s camp.

Her father was jolted out of bed at dawn by his wife, who went hysterical when she could not find her daughter in bed, the paper said.

“At around 4.30 in the morning, a girl came to our camp and she looked very exhausted…when she saw us, she started to scream for her mother,” the paper said, quoting Bedouin Camp chief, Salim Al Olaili.

“One of the campers thought she had come from a nearby tent in our camp, so he took her and put her in bed next to his children…we called the police but they told us they have not received any report about a missing girl.”

The paper, which did not mention the girl’s age, quoted her father as saying he nearly lost hope of finding his daughter.

“We then decided to go to the Bedouin Camp…there, we found her asleep with children in a tent that belongs to an Emirati family.”

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