(Khan Younès) In a stable in Khan Younès, in the south of the Gaza Strip, Fathi Ahmed Gomaa has set up a temporary home for dozens of animals, including lions and baboons, who fled the offensive with him Israeli on Rafah.
“We moved all the animals we had, except three large lions that remained” to Rafah, a besieged and bombed town on the border with Egypt, says this zookeeper. “I ran out of time and couldn’t move them. »
Mr. Gomaa had to abandon his zoo in Rafah when Israel ordered the evacuation of parts of the city in early May.
Before the offensive, the border town had been relatively spared and more than half of the population of the Gaza Strip had taken refuge there.
Now, military operations and army orders to evacuate the east of the city have pushed some 800,000 people to flee Rafah, according to the UN, including Mr. Gomaa and his family.
“Save the lions of Rafah”
“I appeal to the Israeli authorities: these animals have no link with terrorism,” Mr. Gomaa told AFP, asking for their help to coordinate with humanitarian agencies the rescue of the lions remaining in Rafah.
He fears that they will not survive long on their own: “Of course, in a week or ten days, if they are not evacuated, they will die because they will have no water or food.”
The zookeeper says he has already lost several of his animals due to the war. “Three lion cubs, five monkeys, a newborn monkey and nine squirrels,” he lists.
And although the parrots continue to chirp, many of Mr. Gomaa’s other birds are no longer with him.
“I have released dogs, hawks and eagles, as well as pigeons and certain ornamental birds. I released a lot of them because we didn’t have cages to transport them,” he regrets.
In the barn, he makes do with what he has, using improvised fences to raise the height of the enclosures so that their new occupants, spotted deer, cannot escape.
The Israeli army launched ground operations in certain sectors of Rafah on May 7 despite opposition from the international community over the fate of civilians trapped in this city.
The war was triggered by an unprecedented attack by the Islamist movement Hamas on October 7 against southern Israel, which resulted in the death of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP report established from official Israeli data.
At least 35,800 Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed in Israel’s retaliatory offensive, according to data from the Health Ministry of the Hamas-led Gaza government.