KFAROUE, Lebanon (AP) — In the village of Kfaroue in southern Lebanon, Hussein Hamza makes his daily rounds to feed and check on his furry and feathered charges.The number of animals in his care has multiplied since the outbreak of the latest Israel-Hezbollah war, as hundreds of thousands of southern Lebanon residents fled and were unable to take their pets or farm animals. In other cases, the owners were killed in Israeli airstrikes. Some animals came to him wounded.The war in Lebanon began March 2, when the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah fired missiles into Israel after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran.Dozens of dogs gather around Hamza, tails wagging in anticipation, as he pushes a wheelbarrow loaded with pieces of chicken to distribute among them. Some of the dogs are missing limbs. One has an infected wound on its foot that Hamza cleans. He continues his rounds, carrying buckets of water into a pen holding chickens and a pair of camels.
“During the war, people contacted us and told us they had left their chickens behind because everyone had to evacuate suddenly,” Hamza said.
Although there were some airstrikes around Kfaroue, the area was relatively calm compared to areas closer to the border with Israel, where entire villages have been demolished and large swathes of land occupied by Israeli troops.“They asked us to bring the chickens here, because if they were left roaming free, foxes might eat them, and otherwise they would die from hunger and thirst,” he said. “We managed to rescue only the chickens we could reach — not all of them. There were areas where the fighting was too intense and we couldn’t get there.”
