Hyderabad, Aug. 18 -- A lion barely raises its head as children peer through the bars. Nearby, chimpanzees sit listless in their enclosure. At a makeshift zoo near the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, most of the animals on display are malnourished and worn down by the same shortages of food and medicine that have gripped the territory's human population.

That any of them are alive at all is largely down to one man, zoo owner Mahmoud Gomaa, who has spent nearly three years relocating his animals from town to town to keep them out of the path of the war.

Gomaa originally ran his zoo in the southern city of Rafah. He fled in 2024 when Israeli forces attacked and occupied part of the area, moving what animals he could save from place...