After months of bombing by Syrian and Russian forces, cats now outnumber people in the rebel-held Syrian town of Kafr Nabl.

The BBC's Michael Thomson went to the near ghost town. He says the remaining people and cats of Kafr Nabl are giving each other at least some comfort in these hard times.

On the day the correspondent was there, another round of bombing began in the town.

Salah Jar, a 32-year-old resident, took shelter under a table in a corner of his rubble-filled basement to survive.

He was not alone: six or seven cats were huddled around him under the same table. Like Salah, they were terrified.

"When the cats are with me I feel a bit more reassured. When the bombing starts, the fear seems a little less," Salah said.

Kafr Nabl was once home to 40,000 people. Now the number has dwindled to 100 at most.

But the town's cats now outnumber its people many times over. It is hard to estimate their number, but it is certainly several hundred, and could be several thousand.

Salah said so many people had fled that the town is now almost deserted.

"There are very few people in this town now. Some people are needed to look after the cats. They have to be given food and water. So the cats crowd into whichever houses still have people in them," he said.

Source: BBC Bangla. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.