Feeling sad for the death of her four cubs lioness Layla spent her first night inside her cage at a zoo in Rafah to the south of the Gaza Strip.
The severe cold killed four cubs in the zoo after wind blew away plastic sheets used to protect their cage during a winter storm.
The cold weather didn’t allow Layla the lioness to take care of her four young cubs with the lack of the necessary care that the Palestinians themselves in the Gaza Strip don’t have because of the siege imposed by Israel from land sea and air for years thus making the coastal enclave the largest open-air-prison in the world for about two million Palestinians.
The lioness gave birth to four cubs two of which died immediately and two others lived for a while according to Fathi Jumaa one of the owners of the zoo.
In the early hours of Wednesday (17/1/2019) Jumaa got up to check on Layla especially as he expected her to give birth at any time. He was surprised to find out that she gave birth to four cubs two of whom have already been dead which made him take the other two to his house to warm them up.
“After warming up the two cubs I returned them to their mother to feed them but they died because of the extreme cold weather” Jumaa said.
He pointed out that he was planning to sell the cubs in order to pay for feeding the rest of the animals and to maintain the zoo which was damaged more than once during the offensives launched by the Israeli army against the Gaza Strip the last of which was in 2014.
He confirmed that other animals in his private zoo in the southern Gaza Strip survived the storm including the lion and lioness and three other cubs aged 14 months.
He pointed out that most animals in the zoo were brought from Egypt to the Gaza Strip through tunnels years ago.
International animal welfare groups had earlier evacuated several animals and birds living in miserable conditions in Gaza and resettled them elsewhere.
