Ethiopian doctors have successfully performed surgery on a girl born with eight limbs in the country's capital Addis Ababa.

Werkitu Dababa, born with a "parasitic twin" (an incomplete twin), had four arms and four legs. Two of the legs and two of the arms were undeveloped and protruded from her pelvis.

The 17-year-old underwent an eight-hour surgery at the Cure Ethiopia Children's Hospital to remove the useless limbs along with extraneous internal organs.

The teenager told a press conference how happy she was that the surgery had gone well.

She revealed that she was forced to drop out of school because of constant mockery by schoolmates.

"I thought that everybody was just like me when I was a kid. But I began to realise that I was different from others when people made fun of my appearance in my third and fourth grade.

"I could not take the mocking any more after my seventh grade and I dropped out of school. I have been staying at home since then," she said.

Dababa will be given psychological counselling to help her deal with the mental damage that the deformity caused.

Parasitic twins occur when a twin embryo begins developing in utero, but the pair do not fully separate and one embryo maintains dominant development at the expense of the other.

This deformity occurs in only one in half a million births.