KARACHI, Nov 6: The conjoined pair of girls struggling for life for the last 10 days at an intensive care unit of the National Institute of Child Health, died on Thursday afternoon following some complications in their digestive systems.

Sources in the hospital told Dawn that the doctors tried to save the lives of the nine-day-old twins but their efforts failed.

The two girls were born at the Civil Hospital Karachi on the day before Ramazan. Their parents — Shazia and Ramazan — belonged to Thatta.

The girls’ grandmother, Hajiani Aamin, had told Dawn on Wednesday that Mr Ramazan was a motor mechanic and his wife’s first pregnancy had ended in the birth of a stillborn child.

She said the girls’ condition was precarious, expressing the hope that doctors would conduct an operation to separate them soon.

But the hospital’s lead paediatric surgeon — Prof Iftikhar Jan — said normally operations were undertaken only on children of four to six months.

The doctor said no date had been fixed for an operation. As it turned out, the twins died before an operation to separate them could be undertaken.