LONDON, July 26 (Reuters) - Sacdiya Hussein Ali was 7 years old when she was taken to a stranger's house in her native Kenya and held down on a mat by 10 women who pulled her legs apart while a woman cut her with a razor blade.
"The lady who was doing the circumcision came between my legs and she started cutting my private parts," Ali, now 34 and living in London, told Reuters.
"After the cutting I was screaming. They had put some clothes in my mouth so I couldn't shout, but they could still hear me screaming."
Ali is one of an estimated 3 million women and girls who suffer female genital mutilation (FGM) each year.
The practice, also known as female circumcision, involves removing part or all of a girl's clitoris or labia. It is often carried out by an older woman with no medical training, using anything from scissors to tin can lids and pieces of glass.
The victims have no idea what is going to happen to them and anaesthetic or antiseptic treatment is often not used.
"When they cut me, they mixed some herbs and eggs ... and poured it where they had cut and stitched me with thorns," Ali recounted.
The centuries-old practice, prevalent mostly in Africa, is now also being brought by immigrants to Western countries, like Britain.
"FGM is a huge problem in the UK," said Ensharah Ahmed, community development officer at the UK-based Foundation for Women's Health, Research and Development (Forward).
Forward estimates there are around 279,500 women living in Britain who have undergone FGM, with another 22,000 girls under 16 in danger of joining them.
This year London police launched an awareness campaign to coincide with the start of the summer school holidays -- a period, they say, when women who carry out FGM are most likely to come to Britain, or when families send their daughters back to their countries of origin where they can be circumcised.
