I've always loved Haruki Murakami's story about the destruction of the animals in a zoo in Manchukuo, occupied Manchuria, by Japanese soldiers at the end of WW2. Well, below is Jack Shenker's report on the destruction of animals in the Gaza Zoo, from Guernica Magazine. Read Shenker's whole piece, it's great and precise, the way this is. The photo is by Jason Larkin.

Gaza Zoo opened in 2005 and used to attract up to a thousand

visitors daily before the war. “It’s school groups mainly,” says

assistant zookeeper Saleem Bedowi. “The children need this sort of

leisure activity to distract them from the troubles they face in their

daily lives.” Populated largely with birds, monkeys, reptiles, and farm

animals smuggled through Egyptian border tunnels, the zoo was occupied

by Israeli forces following the start of the ground invasion. Nearly

all of its occupants now lie dead.

Many of the creatures on display were hit by missile attacks during

the opening days of the war, including the zoo’s pregnant camel. Others

succumbed to starvation as the war dragged on; the presence of Israeli

troops on the premises prevented the zookeepers from reaching the

animals and feeding them. A few, including one horse, appear to have

been shot dead by soldiers at point-blank range. Those that survived

the conflict did so by eating the corpses of their brothers and

sisters. “When the Israelis withdrew and I finally made it back inside,

the only animals left alive were crazed with hunger and traumatized by

all the death around them,” says Mr. Bedowi. “They are all terrified

now, even the lions.”

Saher, a five-year-old male lion, and Sabreen, his pregnant

companion, apparently endured the chaos by feeding on the zoo’s small

ostrich population. When Mr. Bedowi returned to the zoo, the lions’

enclosure was empty; he eventually found the pair cowering in the

toilets of the zoo’s administrative building. Graffiti now adorns the

walls of the block, including the message “You lost” scrawled in Hebrew.