The teen girl who flew from Cairo to New York with horrific burns all over her body is a US citizen — and her family said Monday she was injured during a cooking accident in their home a few hours outside Cairo.
Aiyah Abdelhalim, 16, arrived at JFK on Saturday after moaning in agony during the flight when her pain medication wore off — but it turns out she was injured about two weeks earlier.
Authorities don’t believe there is anything suspicious about the girl’s story and said there was “miscommunication” between airline officials and passengers. Her family said she came to the States to receive special medical treatment because Egyptian hospitals weren’t equipped to handle the severity of her burns.
“We took her to the hospital here but they refused because they couldn’t take care of her burns,” Ibrahim Abdelhalim, the girl’s father, told The Post by phone from Egypt.
He said that on Sept. 30, Aiyah was cooking with her sister at their family’s home in Alexandria when the gas ignited and the stove exploded, causing extreme burns across her body.
He desperately tried to find doctors who could help her.
“We don’t have technical doctors … My daughters’ health situation was getting worse,” Abdelhalim explained.
“I called the citizens services at the American embassy in Cairo … I kept explaining to them I just needed help. I decided to send her to the States.”
He said his daughter is receiving much better care at Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow than she could at home and is being “treated like VIP.”
“I’m hoping that my daughter will come back as she was,” he said. “I believe that God will answer this hope for us.”