A THREE-YEAR-OLD Iraqi girl disfigured by a terrorist bomb and flown to London for treatment is to receive specialist help in preparing for a life of blindness, after tests showed that she would never regain her sight.

Shams Kareem, described by her father as the “blind angel of Baghdad”, will learn basic skills such as feeding herself and walking unaided under the care of Great Ormond Street hospital for children and the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB).

The sessions are intended to boost her development and show her family how best to care for her while allowing her gradually to increase her independence in the years ahead.

They will take place between operations to repair some of the damage to her eyes and face, which was pierced by as many as 80 pieces of shrapnel. The treatment is being funded by readers of The Sunday Times, who donated £127,000 to an appeal.

A leading eye consultant who conducted the tests concluded Shams had been too badly injured by the car bomb that killed her mother for any sight to be restored.

Yassir Abou-Rayyah, a consultant at both Moorfields Eye hospital and Great Ormond Street, gently broke the news to Shams’s father Hisham Kareem, 32, and her great aunt Sattoota Hussein, 66.

“It is with great regret that I inform you that she did not respond to any flash of light — there was no response whatsoever,” said Abou-Rayyah, who has waived his fees for her care, as her father sat pale and still.

The family had been braced for bad news. Shams’s left eye was destroyed in the blast two years ago and provisional tests found no sight in her right eye.

Abou-Rayyah expressed amazement that Shams had survived to become a lively, affectionate child.

Shams and her family will receive advice from specialists in Great Ormond Street’s visual development clinic.

“A three-year-old learns mostly through play but this can be structured to develop the ability to discriminate between objects using the hands and fingers as a precursor to learning Braille,” said Elizabeth Clery, head of children’s services at the RNIB.

The Royal London Society for the Blind has also invited Shams and her father to attend the Dorton House nursery in Kent. It has a sensory room equipped with toys.

Shams’s family are particularly pleased that she will be able to enjoy music therapy: one of her greatest pleasures is listening to music on her father’s mobile phone.