Caught in the crossfire - PHOTO

The animals were caught in the crossfire of fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants that has killed more than 1,960 Palestinians and 67 people on the Israeli side.In one enclosure a fly-covered pelican huddles in the corner with a duck. Opposite, a small crocodile sits motionless in an inch of stagnant water, next to the rotting corpse of a stork.A gazelle shares another pen with a goose.An Israeli army spokesman told AFP that the military was looking into allegations that it fired missiles in the Al-Bisan park area.Israel launched an air campaign over Gaza on July 8 to take out militants' rockets, followed by a ground offensive nine days later to destroy a network of Hamas cross-border tunnels leading into the Jewish state.The zoo - part of Al-Bisan City - was built by the Hamas government in 2008 as a tourist village to give Gazans some relief from the hardships of life in the Strip, and had a cafeteria and tables where families could sit and relax.The animals were all smuggled through tunnels that connected Egypt to Gaza, before the passages were shut last year with the ouster of Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi, a key ally of the Islamist movement Hamas.Now, Al-Bisan is far from relaxing, with the wire of its enclosures twisted and crushed, debris and dead animals strewn around, and the remains of militant rocket launchers lying nearby.'Before the war the area was very beautiful. There were trees, lots of greenery, palm trees. It was an area for children, there were playgrounds and areas for families,' zookeeper Farid al-Hissi said.Hissi got his job at Al-Bisan after working in a zoo in Israel and because of his love for animals.The death of the animals he cared for has clearly left him in a state of shock.'Eight monkeys were killed, and an ostrich was killed too. The lion's enclosure was wrecked and the zoo was completely destroyed. The Al-Bisan zoo was totally devastated,' he said.(dailymail.co.uk)Bakudaily.Az