Every day since fleeing her home in Dahiyeh under a hail of Israeli missiles last Friday, Dareen Tabbara has risked coming back to feed the 25 cats she was forced to leave behind.
The cats are crammed into the small pet shop she opened just four years ago with all her savings, some still shivering from the relentless sound of air strikes.
There are possibly more cats than people left in Dahiyeh now. In just two weeks, Israel has dramatically escalated its campaign against Hizbollah, launching regular devastating strikes in the densely populated area where the Iran-backed militant group has a controlling presence but where – up until the past few days – hundreds of thousands of civilians lived. Most have fled.