Visibly hungry dogs devour the food provided to them in Khiam. (Credit: Animals Lebanob)
At the other end of the phone, in war-torn southern Lebanon, Kassem Haydar tells how he walks alone, every day, through the empty streets of the abandoned villages in the Bint Jbeil and Marjayoun districts to feed dogs and cats. “At the beginning of the war, I witnessed a scene where a dog devoured a cat, driven by hunger,” he says.An animal lover since childhood, this young man from Chakra (Bint Jbeil) decided to brave the danger to feed the areas stray animals that had been starving since the departure of their owners or the shopkeepers and restaurant owners who regularly fed them. Despite the absence of statistics, the people interviewed for this article estimate the number of animals abandoned in these southern villages to be in the hundreds.“When I went to visit my father, who refused to leave Khiam (Nabatieh), last November, I was...
At the other end of the phone, in war-torn southern Lebanon, Kassem Haydar tells how he walks alone, every day, through the empty streets of the abandoned villages in the Bint Jbeil and Marjayoun districts to feed dogs and cats. “At the beginning of the war, I witnessed a scene where a dog devoured a cat, driven by hunger,” he says.An animal lover since childhood, this young man from Chakra (Bint Jbeil) decided to brave the danger to feed the areas stray animals that had been starving since the departure of their owners or the shopkeepers and restaurant owners who regularly fed them. Despite the absence of statistics, the people interviewed for this article estimate the number of animals abandoned in these southern villages to be in the hundreds.“When I went to visit my father, who refused to leave Khiam (Nabatieh), last November,...
