SINGAPORE, July 8: The historic attempt to separate Iranian twin sisters joined at the head ended tragically on Tuesday when Ladan and Laleh Bijani died within 90 minutes of each other after a marathon operation.

“Raffles Hospital regrets to announce that the Bijani twins, Ladan and Laleh, have both passed away during surgery to separate them,” a hospital statement said, sparking widespread mourning in their homeland.

Doctors told a news conference afterwards that the twins lost too much blood as the neurosurgical stage of the 52-hour operation, in which their tightly enmeshed brains were separated, was coming to an end.

“It was very disappointing for us that the blood loss was so tremendous in the final stages. This occurred mainly after they were separated,” Singapore neurosurgeon Keith Goh, who led the medical team, told reporters.

Dr Goh said the operation was much more complex than expected because, although the twins had individual brains, the blood flow through them was too closely intertwined.

“What we have begun to understand in this case... are that the patterns of blood flow through such abnormally joined brains is hard to predict,” he said.

The hospital had earlier in the afternoon triggered hope the 29-year-old sisters would survive the operation when it announced that the neurosurgeons had successfully separated their heads.

Dr Goh and his team of 24 doctors and about 100 medical staff began the world-first operation at 10:00 am (0200 GMT) on Sunday knowing that one or both of the sisters might die.

“These last 29 years, from the announcement of their birth to the different moments in their painful lives, have now been engraved in the collective memory of the country,” Vice-President Mohammad-Ali Abtahi said.

“Not only the family of Laleh and Ladan, but all the Iranian people have been closely following this operation. Their deaths makes us all distraught.”—AFP