Mali woman gives birth to nine babies

ANKARA: A young Malian woman became a phenomenon in a single day by safely giving birth to nine babies at once at a hospital in Morocco on Tuesday.

Halima Cisse, 25, from the West African country wrote her name in history as a mother of nonuplets five girls and four boys -- and she and the babies are all "doing well," Anadolu Agency (AA) quoted a written statement from the Mali Health Ministry.

According to doctors both in Mali and Morocco, Cisse was initially expected to have septuplets but gave birth by caesarean section to nonuplets, shocking the doctors, who had not noticed another two siblings during ultrasounds.

After a two-week medical stay at a hospital in the Malian capital Bamako, the doctors requested specialist care for the rare case.

On the instruction of Bah Ndaw, the interim president of Mali's transitional government, the authorities flew Cisse to Morocco, where she was admitted to a clinic for treatment on March 30, said the ministry statement.

Nonuplets are extremely rare in medical practice and sometimes some of the newborns may not survive.

-- BERNAMA