Pets orphaned by war in Lebanon to be airlifted to U.S. for adoption

They endured a summer of war - ground-shaking airstrikes, and abandonment by their owners who fled the Israel-Hezbollah conflict. Now Lebanon's unlikely victims of war - its pets - are being airlifted to the United States on Monday for adoption.

For Mona Khoury, who has helped take care of the animals for the past few weeks, the rescue operation is tinged with sadness.

"I've grown attached to them and I'm very, very sad that they're leaving. But I know they'll be in good hands and have a better life there," she said.

Khoury is co-founder of BETA, the humane society Beirut for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which partnered on the project with the American animal society Best Friends.

BETA has gathered up many pets left behind by the tens of thousands of foreigners, or Lebanese with foreign passports, who fled the country in July and August. Many left on the recommendations of their governments, which organized evacuations by land and sea.

But the U.S. Embassy and others told evacuees that pets would not be allowed on the ships and helicopters carrying them to safety, and many families were forced to abandon their animals or leave them with friends who later got rid of them. Some 300 of those dogs and cats, including a few stray animals, will be flown out Monday.

"This is certainly the largest animal airlift operation we've ever done overseas," says Michael Mountain, president of the Utah-based Best Friends, America's largest refuge for abused and abandoned pets. In a telephone interview, he said the homeless pets from Beirut would be airlifted on a special Emirates cargo plane Monday to the U.S.

There will be two refueling stops - one in Manchester, England, and another at New York's JFK Airport - before arriving in Las Vegas, where the orphaned pets will be put on Best Friends trucks for the 3.5-hour ride to temporary housing at the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab, southern Utah.

"Once there, the pets will undergo a final health and behavior evaluation before they're off to their new, permanent homes," Mountain said. "We've already had a lot of offers to adopt these cats and dogs," he added.

He said their entire Middle East operation is costing around US$250,000, most of it from donations raised by animal activists.

Volunteers at the sanctuary have been hard at work building temporary houses for the pets arriving from Lebanon.

"This is for the animals," said Alberto Nunez, one of the construction team. "When I think of their situation over there, it makes me so sad. I want to work for them," he said, according to the Best Friends Web site.

Best Friends arranged a similar operation just a year ago in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when it brought more than 6,000 animals out of the disaster-stricken zone and to new homes. The society has also been assisting animal groups in Israel, where people were also evacuated without their pets.

But the major crisis for animals has been in Lebanon.

On July 12 at the start of the 34-day war, BETA had to move dogs and cats from a shelter near a Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut that was repeatedly hit by Israeli warplanes. The animals took refuge in an abandoned hilltop pig farm in Monteverde, in the hills overlooking Beirut. Other BETA shelters were also damaged.

At the height of the war, they were featured on ABC's "Good Morning America," after which adoption offers from the U.S. "started coming down on us by the hundreds," said Khoury.

Jutta Sold, a 36-year-old animal activist who is also a BETA volunteer, said the airlift to the U.S. is "a very good thing."

"It's sad for me, I knew some of these dogs when they were just puppies, but I'm very hopeful that their chances for adoption are much better over there," said the Germany citizen who adopted one of the canines herself.

She said people in Lebanon don't have much connection with animals. "The attitude here is very different from Europe or the United States. A lot of people are afraid of animals, they kick them around."

She also noted there are no laws to protect animals, and chances of them being adopted were much higher in the West.

	Two dogs seen at the BETA farm east of Beirut, Lebanon on Saturday. (AP)