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

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

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 October 7 attack in southern Israel by Hamas, which triggered the war in Gaza last year.

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

According to Lebanese law, the possession of wild and exotic animals is prohibited.

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

In mid-September, the group finally recovered her after filing a case with the police and the judiciary, who questioned her owner and forced him to give up the feline.

Soon after, Israel launched an offensive against the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah – after almost a year of low-level conflict – and Baalbek was heavily bombed.

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

He was due to fly to South Africa in October, but international airlines have halted flights to Lebanon as Israeli planes and drones hit sites near the country’s only airport.

Hezbollah began firing rockets across the border into Israel in support of his allyHamas on 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 was active in stopping animal trafficking and the exotic animal trade, rescuing more than two dozen big cats from imprisonment in luxury homes and sending them to wildlife sanctuaries.

Since the war began, Animals Lebanon has also rescued pets that were trapped in damaged apartments as hundreds of thousands of Lebanese fled the bombings – nearly 1,000 in the past month alone.

“A lot are still in our care because the owners of these animals are still displaced,” Mier said. “So we can’t expect the person to take this animal back when they could be living on the street or in a school.”

Before the conflict escalated, the rights group was able to move more freely around the country as the fighting remained mostly in southern Lebanon along the border with Israel. But things became more difficult as airstrikes became more frequent and spread over wider areas of the country.

Unaware of the war around her, Sara thrived. She was fed a plate of raw meat daily and grew to 40 kilograms (88 pounds). He cuddled every morning with Mier’s wife Maggie, also an animal rights activist.

But activists faced a major hurdle: How would they get her out of Lebanon?

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

Days before the eviction, Sara played in one of the bedrooms of Mier’s apartment, with pillows and chew toys scattered about.

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

Mier anticipates that Sara will be kept for monitoring and disease control, but soon she will be part of a community of other lions.

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