The eight-month-old tiger living in Northeast China Tigers' Zoo in Harbin City wounded her right eyeball a month ago when she was playing around with other cubs.

Conducted by experts from a local military hospital, the operation is said to be the first of its kind in China.

The vets at the zoo failed to save her eyeball, and later, doctors from the No. 211 Hospital of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) found that the cub's left eyeball would also be infected if the right one was not removed in time.

The operation turned out to be a success. The cub should fully recover in a week, according to the doctors.

The young tiger's mother comes from a family of pure Siberian tigers.

Currently, there are less than 300 Siberian tigers of all kinds living in the wild around the world, while in China the number of wild tigers is less than 10.

The zoo in Harbin, capital of northeastern Heilongjiang Province, is the largest of its kind in the world, where artificially-bred tigers now number 270. They have been bred from the original pool of eight tigers.

(Xinhua News Agency November 26, 2002)