A ONE-MINUTE telephone call from Baghdad has brought relief to a Kent teenager who had been terrified that her family in Iraq might be bombed by Coalition forces.

Sulapha Manaim, 15, of Allington, Maidstone, had been nervously watching television coverage of the war while American and British troops conducted their "shock and awe" bombing campaign on the Iraqi capital.

But her agony came to an end when her family received a phone call to say her grandmother, aunts and uncles were all safe.

The Maidstone Girls Grammar School pupil said: "They managed to use a First Aid phone to call us. It cost $10 a minute so they just rang and said they were ok.

"It is still quite unsettled out there. My uncle says he is in a stable area where there is food available, but other areas aren't so good."

Sulapha's family left Iraq for political reasons in 1976 and moved to Britain, where Sulapha was born, in 1991. They left behind them a large part of their family, but contacting them was difficult because they feared Saddam Hussein's agents would tap their telephone.

Under the old regime, anyone suspected of being a spy would be interrogated or tortured.

Now Sulapha is looking forward to having long conversations with her family and possibly even travelling to Baghdad for the first time to meet them.