Young visitors walking into a zoo close to Gaza's Nuseirat refugee camp were greeted by a lion barely acknowledging them through its cage bars, alongside listless chimpanzees sitting in their enclosure. Shortages of food, vaccines and medicine have left many creatures severely malnourished and weak, but they remain alive thanks largely to the persistent efforts of owner Mahmoud Gomaa. He originally ran the facility in the southern city of Rafah, but explained he was forced to flee after Israeli forces attacked and occupied sections of the area during 2024.
Amid ongoing fighting, he moved the surviving animals from town to town before securing a new site in Nuseirat in central Gaza earlier this year. Reopening the zoo at this location, he hoped to give traumatised local children something to enjoy after nearly three years of conflict and destruction. "In the beginning of the war people were looking for a way to survive ... and I was looking for a way to save the animals more than saving myself," Gomaa told .
There were a number of zoos in Gaza before the conflict between Israel and Hamas erupted, displaying exotic and wild animals including lions and eagles, municipal records show. Anyone trying to keep one open now faces enormous challenges, vets and animal experts said, not least in getting food in a territory struggling to feed its human population. "Owners are currently feeding them frozen meat," veterinarian Nidal Fadel said.
"This is a catastrophe and a wrong nutritional plan because in nature they eat fresh prey." The animals themselves are bearing the brunt of the war — sometimes directly. When Gomaa fled Rafah, he said he had to leave behind three lions, several crocodiles and some African ostriches. A few months later, Gomaa returned and only found the bones of the crocodiles and the ostriches.
Those three lions, which he had locked in their cages, had disappeared. There is also the trauma caused by the sound and sight of the conflict raging around them. "Lions can detect sounds and disturbances that humans may not notice," said Amir Khalil, a veterinarian who has led several trips to Gaza by the animal welfare organisation Four Paws and rescued other zoos' animals.
"Bombing and constant conflict create enormous stress and fear for them," he added. In Nuseirat, the surviving lion barely looked up at the visitors. But the children had better luck with some of the other animals, letting parrots ride on their shoulders and petting smaller monkeys.
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