BEIRUT — A dog clings to Hussein Hamza inside a car as he pans his camera around to show the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike in southern Lebanon.
''Poor thing. Look at this, he's clinging to me out of fear,'' Hamza says in the video he posted online. ''A missile hit here,'' he said, his voice shaking.
As Israel pummels southern Lebanon with airstrikes, tens of thousands of residents are fleeing their homes in fear. But Hamza is staying. His mission is to care for the dogs and other animals left behind.
He runs an animal shelter that houses 200 dogs in the village of Kfour. Recently, he has also been driving around towns and villages in the south, looking for stray animals and abandoned pets to feed.
''I opened bags of food and left them water. I'm relying on God,'' said Hamza as he spread food hundreds of meters away from the shelter he runs, in case the dogs need to escape the facility when airstrikes come too close.
Israel has dramatically stepped up its airstrikes across many parts of Lebanon, which it says target Hezbollah and its weapons. However over a 1,000 people have been killed in the country in the past two weeks, nearly a quarter of them women and children, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.
The Lebanese government says the fighting may have displaced up to a million people, although the U.N. estimate is around 200,000.
With his town under constant bombardment, Hamza, 56, refused to abandon the animals in his care.
