Volunteers risk lives to retrieve pets from bombed out south Beirut

A woman carries a cat past a destroyed building at the site of an overnight Israeli airstrike in Beirut's southern suburb of Shayyah on October 2, 2024. At least five Israeli strikes hit Beirut's southern suburbs early October 2, a Lebanese security source said, as the Israeli military said it was targeting Hezbollah sites and issued several evacuation orders. [AFP]

After Israeli bombardment forced them to flee their homes in haste,  displaced Lebanese have been asking volunteers to enter their bombed-out neighbourhoods to retrieve their pets.

Maggie Shaarawi, vice president of the Animals Lebanon charity, is one of the rescuers.

"A lot of people had to evacuate their homes in a hurry. In most cases, cats stressed by bombing hide," making it impossible to scoop them up quickly, she said.

"Our goal is to just enter, rescue and leave."

On Thursday, Shaarawi and two others helped a resident of Beirut's southern suburbs retrieve her eight traumatised cats.

Through a video call, the worried woman in a white headscarf guided them to the living room where she had herded Fifi, Leo, Blacky, Teddy, Tanda, Ziki, Kitty and Masha as she left.

"We were able to find them all," Shaarawi said triumphantly.

Doing their best to hurry, they managed to entice the petrified felines out from under a green velvet sofa and gently lift each of them into a holding crate.

"Luckily we got them out, because (then) most of that area was destroyed," she said.

A strike hit the suburbs as they were preparing to go to another home.

"It's the first time we had a hit very close to us. We're lucky to have left alive," Shaarawi said.

'Just waiting for their owners' 

Israel has sharply intensified its air strikes  against Lebanese militant group Hezbollah since September 23, killing more than 1,000 people and pushing more than a million more to flee their homes, according to Lebanese figures.

Many of the displaced have taken their pets with them.

A teenager was seen clutching a ginger cat to his chest as he fled his southern village this week.

Some people have even ignored evacuation warnings to stay with their pets, Shaarawi said.

"So far, we've retrieved from the Beirut suburbs around 120 animals, and from the south another 60," she said.

Despite their close call with the Israeli air strike, Shaarawi and her team were back in the southern suburbs Friday to try to retrieve more pets.

"Cats turn into tigers when they're scared," she said.

Parking their car on the outskirts of the heavily bombarded Hezbollah bastion, they briefly zipped in on mopeds.

"The war is traumatising for both animals and people. They're being bombed every day, and they don't know what's happening," she said.

"They're just waiting for their owners to come back."

Sometimes the team does not get to the pets in time.

On a mission to retrieve three cats on Thursday, they found one of them dead, its limbs stiff and its fluffy white coat caked in dust.

The other two were nowhere to be found, but Shaarawi said she was sure they did not survive. "The house was totally destroyed."