Nuala Haughey in Rafah walked among the mangled remains and corpses of what used to be Gaza's only zoo
The mangled wrecks of animal cages and the carcasses of a pheasant, an Egyptian goose and a goat lay yesterday in the churned up ground of what used to be Rafah's tiny zoo, the only such amenity in the entire Gaza Strip.
This special amenity for the children of this dirt-poor town was reduced yesterday to a wasteland of bulldozed earth. A crushed tortoise lay in the two-acre wreckage and young boys were chasing after some small birds still fluttering around the ruins.
While the Israeli army press office continued to deny that it caused any damage to the privately run venture, its dismayed owner, Mohammed Ahmad Juma (40), was surveying the comprehensive devastation.
Eighty animals had fled, including a kangaroo, a fox, an ostrich and some monkeys after Israeli armoured bulldozers crashed into the walled-off amenity in Rafah's Brazil neighbourhood at around 2.30 a.m. on Thursday, he said.
The troops took six hours to demolish the zoo's buildings housing its 120 exhibits containing 85 species including wolves, raccoons, foxes, and exotic birds.
Mr Juma said his neighbourhood was quite safe and a kilometre away from Rafah's flashpoint border with Egypt, the focus of the Israeli army's efforts to eradicate weapons smuggling tunnels.
"We were surprised to see some Israeli tanks moving here," he said, standing in front of a cage of noisy Australian sparrows. "Suddenly they just entered the zoo, broke some cages and took some parrots and later they came back and started to raze everything in an indiscriminate way with bulldozers." Mr Juma, who watched the intrusion from his home in the zoo grounds, claimed that some soldiers stole up to 45 macaw parrots, a prized exotic species which he said were worth some €2,000 each.
A former trader in exotic birds and animals, Mr Juma set up the Rafah Animal Garden five years ago, charging an entrance fee of one shekel (20 cent). He said there were no tunnels in the zoo and no terrorists had been using it.
"I believe this destruction was to cover their looting. They were here mainly for destruction but they found a precious thing and stole it," he added.
Five-year-old Mohammed Raja Handam visited the stark scene yesterday with his father. He had been on a visit to the zoo only the previous week.
"I like the animals, the dogs and also the monkeys and the ostrich. There were lots of things here," he said.
Journalists were unable to visit the zoo on Thursday because the Brazil area of the Rafah Refugee Camp was being held by Israeli troops as part of its ongoing Operation Rainbow.
However, the forces pulled back from the area early yesterday.
An Israeli army spokeswoman told The Irish Times around noon yesterday that its troops did not demolish the amenity, although it had heard reports of escaped animals.
However, later in the day an army spokesman said the road that troops had intended to travel through in the neighbourhood was rigged with explosives, so they bypassed them and went through the zoo.
"Before the operation there were clear directives not to harm animals and not to take any animals," he said.
"There were some animals that were released by the IDF because they didn't want animals to get hurt while the forces were going through, so they thought that it would be better to release the animals so that they wouldn't be in the way."