(UTV|Khartoum) – Online calls have grown to help save five “malnourished and sick” lions kept in a park in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, AFP news agency reports.
On Sunday, crowds headed to the park to see the lions after their photographs went viral, AFP reports.
“I was shaken when I saw these lions at the park… their bones are protruding from the skin,” the organiser of a campaign to rescue them, Osman Salih, is quoted as saying by AFP.
مشيت بالصدفة لحديقة القرشي في خرطوم ٣ وانصدمت بوجود خمسة اسود منتهين عبارة عن جلد على عظم وفي واحد اتوفى قريب بسبب الجوع والإهمال ???? الأسود دي محتاجه جهه تهتم بيها وتوفر ليهم الأكل الكافي وتعالجهم وإلا للاسف برضو حيموتو#لم_تسقط_بعد#حنبنيهو@SudanPMHamdok pic.twitter.com/SSJ26Lscud
— Osman Salih (@0smanSalih) January 18, 2020
The five lions are held in cages at Khartoum’s Al-Qureshi Park but have been suffering from shortages of food and medicine for weeks, AFP adds.
Park officials and medics are quoted as saying that some of the lions lost almost two-thirds of their weight in the last few weeks.
“Food is not always available, so often we buy it from our own money to feed them,” Essamelddine Hajjar, a manager at the park, told AFP.
The park is managed by Khartoum municipality and partially funded by private donors but Sudan is in the middle of an economic crisis, fuelled by soaring food prices and a foreign currency shortage, AFP reports.