Not just guns: Gazans smuggle lions into zoo

100 tunnels along border with Egypt feed local economyRAFAH, Gaza Strip - The monkeys and lions were drugged, tossed into cloth sacks and dragged through smuggling tunnels under the border between Egypt and the besieged Gaza Strip before ending up in a dusty Gaza zoo. Stocked almost entirely with smuggled animals, the "Heaven of Birds and Animals Zoo" is a sign of Gaza's ever-expanding tunnel industry. Dozens of passages are believed to snake under the border, serving as a mainstay of the local economy and a way to smuggle in everything from cigarettes to lingerie to automatic weapons.And smugglers say a new effort by Egypt to blow up the passages will have little effect on the flow of goods.Gaza's commercial trade was literally forced underground after the Islamic militant Hamas seized the coastal territory last summer, prompting neighboring Israel and Egypt to restrict movement through commercial crossings. While Israel has allowed more goods in since a June truce with Hamas, it is not enough to meet Gaza's needs. Tunnel smugglers fill the gaps, bringing in contraband drugs and guns and more mundane items like frilly underwear and laptop computers, as well as exotic animals like the lion and lioness that pace in a cage at the Rafah zoo.$40,000 spent buying animalsThey were purchased as cubs from Egypt for $3,000 each, drugged and dragged through a tunnel in sacks. Zoo manager Shadi Fayiz said he went through a middleman to put in his order.At the small zoo, where umbrellas shade battered couches, there is a parrot who was slipped through a tunnel in a cage. He can ask for a kiss in Arabic, startling veiled Gazan women walking by, Fayiz said.