Sharjah24- AFP: Doel has a reputation as Belgium's best-known ghost town. But its few inhabitants -- today numbering just 21 -- now see a glimmer of hope of their village bouncing back to life.
If it does, it would be a remarkable change of fortune for a place that has been steadily emptying out since the late 1970s when its population was 60 times bigger, leaving behind silent streets of crumbling, sealed-up homes covered in graffiti.
Squeezed between Antwerp's ever-expanding port -- the second-biggest in Europe -- and a nuclear power plant, Doel has become a morbid attraction for curious tourists and "urban explorers" who film themselves daringly traipsing around inside ruined buildings.
Police patrol regularly to prevent vandals and squatters moving in.
Only two cafes -- one attached to a 17th-century windmill -- and an immaculate parish church remind visitors that the village still holds out against oblivion.
"It's not a ghost town... But if you come here on a Sunday, or especially in the evenings, of course you see the empty houses and that's what triggers people the most" to think that it looks like one, resident Liese Stuer said.
"I think it's very important that people know that it's not a ghost town, that they know there's still people trying to live here and trying to set up life," she said.
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