BEIRUT — When Sara first arrived at her rescuers’ home, she was sick, tired and covered in ringworms and signs of abuse all over her furry little body.

After spending two months in a small Beirut apartment with an animal rights group, the four-and-a-half-month-old lion cub arrived at a wildlife reserve in South Africa on Friday after a long journey aboard a yacht and of planes, escaping the two Israeli airstrikes. and abusive owners.

Sara is the fifth lion cub to be evacuated from Lebanon by local rescue group Animals Lebanon since Hezbollah and Israel began exchanging fire a day after the Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel by Hamas that started the war in Gaza last year.

Animals Lebanon first discovered Sara on social media in July. Its owner, a Lebanese man from the ancient city of Baalbek, posted bombastic videos of himself parading with the little lion cub on TikTok and Instagram.

According to Lebanese law, it is prohibited to own wild and exotic animals.

The cub was “really just used for show off,” said Jason Mier, executive director of Animals Lebanon.

In mid-September, the group finally got her back after filing a complaint with the police and the courts, who questioned her owner and forced him to abandon the feline.

Shortly after, Israel launched an offensive against the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah – after nearly a year of low-intensity conflict – and Baalbek was the target of heavy bombing.

Mier and his team managed to extract Sara from Baalbek weeks before Israel launched its aerial bombing campaign on the ancient city, and moved her to an apartment in Beirut’s bustling Hamra commercial district.

She was supposed to travel to South Africa in October, but international airlines halted flights to Lebanon as Israeli planes and drones struck sites near the country’s only airport.

Hezbollah began firing rockets across the Israeli border in support of his allyHamas, October 8, 2023, a day after Palestinian militants staged the deadly surprise incursion into southern Israel. Israel responded with bombings and airstrikes. Beginning in mid-September, Israel launched an intense aerial bombardment of much of Lebanon, followed by a ground invasion.

Before the conflict, Animals Lebanon worked to stop animal trafficking and the exotic pet trade, rescuing more than two dozen felines from imprisonment in palatial homes and sending them to wildlife preserves.

Since the start of the war, Animals Lebanon has also rescued pets stuck in damaged apartments as hundreds of thousands of Lebanese fled bombings – nearly a thousand in the last month alone.

“Many are still in our custody because the owners of these animals are still displaced,” Mier said. “We therefore cannot expect the person to take this animal back while living on the street or in a school.”

Before the escalation of the conflict, the human rights group was able to move more freely across the country as fighting continued largely in southern Lebanon along the border with Israel. But things have become more difficult as airstrikes have become more frequent and spread to larger swaths of the country.

Ignoring the war around her, Sara prospered. She was fed a tray of raw meat daily and weighed up to 40 kilograms (88 pounds). She gave Mier’s wife Maggie, also an animal rights activist, cuddles every morning.

But the activists faced a major obstacle: how were they going to get her out of Lebanon?

Animals Lebanon collected donations from supporters and rights groups around the world to put Sara on a small yacht and take her to Cyprus. From there, she flew to the United Arab Emirates before ending her long journey in Cape Town.

A few days before she was evacuated, Sara was playing in one of the bedrooms in Mier’s apartment, with cushions and chew toys scattered around.

At dawn on Thursday, he arrived at the port of Dbayeh, just north of Beirut. Mier and his team were relieved, but also struggled to hold back tears following his departure.

Mier anticipates that Sara will be held for surveillance and disease control purposes, but will soon become part of a community of other lions.

“Then she will be integrated with two lions that we recently sent from Lebanon, so she will make a nice group of three, hopefully,” he said. “This is where she will live the rest of her life. This is the best option for her.