<p>Doctors here had already removed more than two dozen 10-centimetre (four-inch) rusty nails, broken syringe needles and aluminium rods from the girl’s legs before removing a nail lodged dangerously close to her spine on Tuesday.<br /><br />“The girl is recovering from the operation and is generally in good condition. She is already playing again,” the girl’s surgeon Kamaruddin said on Wednesday.<br /><br />X-rays in September revealed the foreign objects in the girl’s legs and back, prompting suspicions among local residents that they had been inserted magically.<br /><br />The governor of South Sulawesi province, Syahrul Yasin Limpo, visited the victim and said he believed witchcraft was to blame.<br /><br />“Believe it or not, in South Sulawesi it is possible for these sorts of things to happen,” Syahrul was quoted as saying by local news portal Okezone.com.<br /><br />“We have often heard about people whose heads suddenly go soft, and medics have no idea what the cause is. It’s called magic and it’s explained in the Koran.”<br /><br />Doctors said that scars on the girl’s legs showed the nails had been inserted by a person over a six-month period.<br /><br />The girl’s parents told media that the scars were from the girl trying to remove the nails and that they had no knowledge of how the nails got there.<br /><br />Indonesia is mainly Muslim but belief in black magic is widespread.</p>
<p>Doctors here had already removed more than two dozen 10-centimetre (four-inch) rusty nails, broken syringe needles and aluminium rods from the girl’s legs before removing a nail lodged dangerously close to her spine on Tuesday.<br /><br />“The girl is recovering from the operation and is generally in good condition. She is already playing again,” the girl’s surgeon Kamaruddin said on Wednesday.<br /><br />X-rays in September revealed the foreign objects in the girl’s legs and back, prompting suspicions among local residents that they had been inserted magically.<br /><br />The governor of South Sulawesi province, Syahrul Yasin Limpo, visited the victim and said he believed witchcraft was to blame.<br /><br />“Believe it or not, in South Sulawesi it is possible for these sorts of things to happen,” Syahrul was quoted as saying by local news portal Okezone.com.<br /><br />“We have often heard about people whose heads suddenly go soft, and medics have no idea what the cause is. It’s called magic and it’s explained in the Koran.”<br /><br />Doctors said that scars on the girl’s legs showed the nails had been inserted by a person over a six-month period.<br /><br />The girl’s parents told media that the scars were from the girl trying to remove the nails and that they had no knowledge of how the nails got there.<br /><br />Indonesia is mainly Muslim but belief in black magic is widespread.</p>