The Herald reported last month that Princess Gbeadah believed her daughter Lofty had been killed along with other members of her family in a village massacre in 2003.

Just weeks before Ms Gbeadah came to Australia from a Guinea refugee camp in 2005, she was informed her daughter was alive.

Lofty survived because she was sent from the village by a relative to collect water just minutes before the massacre took place.

The then two-year-old girl was taken in by a family who spent two years trying to find Ms Gbeadah, who fled to a neighbouring country after being told her daughter had been killed.

She is being cared for by an aunt in the Liberian capital, Monrovia.

After making the amazing discovery that Lofty was alive, Ms Gbeadah made an initial unsuccessful attempt in the refugee camp to get her daughter included on her humanitarian visa to Australia.

She was advised it was better to make the application from Australia to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, which she did in the weeks after arriving in Newcastle.

But in 2006 it was denied because Ms Gbeadah could not prove the child was hers.

Lofty's birth certificate was burnt in the village raid and Ms Gbeadah could not afford the cost of DNA testing.

This week the migration agent helping the family, Newcastle-based deputy director of Northern Settlement Services Lulu Tantos, submitted a second application for Lofty, now eight, to be reunited.

After being contacted by The Herald last month the Department of Immigration and Citizenship reviewed Ms Gbeadah's file and invited her to submit a second humanitarian visa application for Lofty.

The department has offered to pay for DNA testing, if it is required, to prove Lofty is Ms Gbeadah's daughter.