They are among the dozens of animals which have died at Khan Younis zoo in the impoverished Gaza Strip after they were left without food.

Zoo owner Mohammed Awaida has blamed the Palestinian and Israeli conflict for the tragedy- claiming it meant that staff were unable to feed or care properly for the animals at the zoo.

Mr Awaida said he opened the 'South Forest Park' in 2007, only to lose a number of animals during Israel's military offensive against Hamas that began in December 2008. During the three-week offensive, launched in response to rocket attacks on Israel, Awaida said he could not reach the zoo, and many animals died of neglect and starvation.

Once again unable to reach the zoo, animals died of neglect and starvation. They include a little monkey, which died in its enclosure-  its teeth still clenched together. In another enclosure, a Palestinian zoo worker inspects the remnants of a crocodile.

Khan Younis is one of five zoos in the Gaza Strip, a densely populated coastal enclave of 1.7million people ruled by Islamic Hamas militants.

With no government body in Gaza that oversees zoos, and no animal rights movement in the region, the Khan Younis facility is virtually unsupervised.

Care is basic. There is no zookeeper on the premises and medical treatment is done by consulting over the phone with zoo veterinarians in Egypt. 

The zoo has a tradition of stuffing and embalming those that die and return them to their enclosures. The centre had ten embalmed animals on dismay in makeshift exhibits — fashioned from fencing salvaged from Jewish settlements that Israel dismantled in 2005.

But after losing dozens of the zoo's 65 live animals, which included ostriches, monkeys, turtles, deer, a llama, a lion and a tiger, the numbers of dead animals may risk outnumbering the living.

(dailymail.co.uk)