Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 11, 1991 TAG: 9103110050
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: KUWAIT CITY LENGTH: Medium
No more than two dozen animals are left of the 442 inhabitants of eight months ago, according to the self-appointed volunteer caretakers who struggled, mostly in vain, to save the animals after zoo employees fled the Iraqi invasion.
They say the ill-fed Iraqi soldiers shot, killed, and ate the gazelles, the llama and the African porcupines as well as the farm animals in the petting zoo.
The Iraqis shipped to Baghdad the exotic birds and the dromedary, the volunteers said, and they fed the ostrich to the lions. The wolves died of starvation in their cages. On the day before the fall of Kuwait City, the volunteers said, the Iraqis shot Aziza the elephant in the shoulder and one of the lions in the paw.
Now, across the seven acres of walled-in desolation, ammunition still litters the ground near buried bunkers, and carcasses of exotic animals rot in cages. For months the surviving animals, many apparently badly malnourished, have been left free to rummage for themselves.
It appears none might have survived without the help of two men, Ali Mubarak Hohti, 35, and his brother Suleiman, 30. The sanitation department inspector and the motorcycle policeman took over the animals' care eight months ago after the zoo employees fled. The two brothers scrounged for food for the animals in city garbage piles and bribed Iraqi soldiers with food and videocassette recorders to be allowed to enter the zoo.
"I loved these animals," Hohti said. "Every week, I came here when I was small. Before the war, I brought my children here. I decided to help them because I can get food but the animals, they cannot go out."
The Iraqi army took over the compound almost immediately after Aug. 2, Hohti said, using the buildings as barracks.
Hohti said that during the first week, when he tried to enter to feed the animals, the soldiers beat and kicked him and then finally agreed to a compromise: He would supply them with food and electronic goods and they would allow the brothers to come every day.
But despite the brothers' efforts, many animals died.
The brothers used their savings to buy two donkeys a week to feed the lions, the tiger and the wolves.
The water buffalos and the yak were skin and bones. Aziza the elephant was covered in scabs and so ravenous that she grabbed a yellow camera from a reporter's neck, tried to swallow it, spat it out and stomped on it. Hohti said she had eaten a BBC video camera the day before as well as a Belgian television microphone and another camera.
Lack of clean water was the major cause of illness. The pools for the hippopotamus and Syrian bear, which need to be changed every week, have now sat stagnant for a month. The water - thick, green and crawling with insects - is lapped up by the bears. Gashes on the hippopotamus's back appear to be severely infected.
Help, however, arrived last week.
British and American military veterinarians and the World Society for the Protection of Animals brought in antibiotics for the hippopotamus and the bears.
On Saturday, the World Society for the Protection of Animals found 210 tons of food that it could use for the animals, said John Walsh, its assistant director for international projects.
The society also brought in New Zealand legs of lamb last week. Vegetables are to be trucked in next week, he said. A pump is expected to arrive soon to pump out the bear and hippopotamus pools, and the animals are being given antibootics to stabilize their conditions, Walsh said.
The brothers, dressed in matching bright red coveralls, now receive a weekly salary.
by CNB