For sale, a zoo in Gaza City

An emaciated lion, a hyperactive camel and the only "zebra" in the Palestinian territories - this unusual assortment of animals could soon be yours.

Mahra Land, a ramshackle zoo in Gaza, is on the market.

The zoo made headlines last year when its owners engineered, not with genetics, but black paint, a pair of "zebras" out of two donkeys.

TV reports showed delighted local children patting, slapping and even riding the exotic-looking creatures. The donkeys replaced two real zebras that died in Israel's three-week war on the Gaza Strip last year.

But six months after acquiring global stardom, one "zebra" has died, and the owners, no longer able to meet the costs of feeding their menagerie under Israel's economic siege of Gaza, are being forced to sell up.

In their darkened office - power cuts are a daily occurrence because Gaza's power plant keeps running out of fuel - Mohammed Berghout and his brother Ahmed, the two young businessmen behind Mahra Land, are still bemused at how they transformed two white donkeys into respectable copies of zebras.

"Ahmed had the idea to paint donkeys," Mohammed says.

First they tried ordinary black paint but that didn't work very well, then they mixed human hair dye in a plastic bowl and, using masking tape to get the striped effect, applied it to their white coats.

The results helped shed light on the desperation of Gazans under siege and the limited options for its children, many of whom have never been allowed to travel even as far as Israel or the West Bank, and whose entertainment is limited to the beach in summer, an outing to one of four dilapidated zoos or a walk around a British World War I cemetery.

Last year's Israeli air bombardment and ground invasion made it too dangerous for Mohammed or Ahmed to reach the zoo to feed their charges.

When they eventually did, they found many of the animals had starved to death.

The sign at the entrance on the outskirts of Gaza City still beckons "Well Com" in English, but a raw east wind whips across the Strip and there isn't a visitor in sight.

The dodgems have broken down and Thomas the Tank Engine in the miniature train ride has come to a halt opposite an outdoor cafe whose plastic chairs are empty.

The animals seem to have stopped bothering, too. Curled up in the corner of his narrow cell, eyes shut, the lion certainly looks defeated. His female companion died of hunger during the war.

In another pen there's a dog, like an overgrown Cairn terrier, barking in an urgent high pitch, perhaps because his neighbours include a family of domestic cats.

A few doors down, a fox trots around his cell in agitated circles, his skinny vixen wife and their young offspring looking on with glazed expressions from the corner.

There's a lone monkey, a gazelle, owls, storks, and some suspiciously inactive fish.

The surviving dye-job zebra looks scrawny on her fragile legs, her head cast down and the black stripes on her back faded to a dirty grey.

"We thought people would love to come here," said Mohammed. "But it is too expensive to feed the animals".

Feeding a lion alone costs up to $34 a day. Exotic animals, even just souped-up donkeys, were always going to be a difficult business model.

- INDEPENDENT