Vietnam War 'girl in the picture' reunited with journalist who saved her life

In a photograph that sent shock waves around the world, nine-year-old Kim was pictured fleeing the attack by the South Vietnamese army on her village with her arms outstretched, naked and screaming for help.

Thirty-eight years later Kim has been reunited with Christopher Wain, the ITN correspondent who took her to the nearest hospital after the photograph was taken on June 8, 1972.

Kim told the BBC: "I heard the noise of the bombs then suddenly I saw the fire everywhere around me.

"I was terrified and I ran out of the fire. I was with my brother and my cousin. We just kept running. My clothes were burned off by the fire."

A Vietnamese photographer, Nick Ut, took the photograph as she fled the attack and she was still running when Mr Wain stopped her to pour water on her, while instructing his crew to keep filming.

He took Kim to hospital in Saigon and days later moved her to a specialist plastic surgery centre for life-saving operations. She stayed there for 14 months.

Four decades later, Kim lives in Canada with her husband and two children, after being forced to flee Vietnam and Cuba where she was used as a propaganda tool against the west.

She said: "I wanted to escape the picture because the more famous it got, the more it cost me my private life [but] I realised that now I have freedom and am in a free country, I can take control of that picture."

• Christopher Wain presents It's My Story – The Girl in the Picture on BBC Radio 4 at 4pm on Tuesday, 18 May