Region

GAZA CITY — Two lions cubs were on Sunday taken from a Gaza Strip refugee camp to Jordan, their former owner said, after their maintenance became too great a financial burden.

"We're very sad. The two lions were like children to us," Saadi Al Jamal said of the five-month old male and female big cats named Max and Mona.

Al Jamal, a Palestinian Authority security employee who lives in the Rafah refugee camp in southern Gaza and is a father to six, had planned to make some money by leasing the lions out to amusement parks, seaside resorts and restaurants.

Feeding them cost Jamal about 120 shekels ($32, 29 euros) a day, he told AFP, a tall order in Israeli-blockaded Gaza where prices have soared since a devastating war last summer with Israel.

He also failed to convince the Hamas rulers of the Palestinian enclave to provide him land on which he could establish a zoo for the lions and other animals.

Al Jamal said he was giving the animals to the Jordanian sanctuary for free.

British animal welfare group Four Paws, which facilitated the move, said last month it was seeking to rescue the cubs from their "hugely inappropriate situation" in which they were growing to be a threat to their surroundings.

COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry unit that coordinates with Gaza, announced on Sunday it had coordinated the transfer of Max and Mona to Jordan through Israel.

In September, Four Paws facilitated the transfer of three lions from Al Bisan zoo in Gaza to Jordan after the zoo came under heavy fire during the 50-day conflict which ended on August 26.

Four Paws said Max and Mona's parents were most likely smuggled into Gaza by underground tunnels from Egypt. It estimated there were currently 40 big cats in Gaza.

Jamal said he had asked Four Paws to help him visit Max and Mona in Jordan. 

QAA, Lebanon — The barren mountains separating the Lebanese village of Qaa from Syria have helped shield it from the war raging next door, yet fears of missile attacks, abductions and incursions have persisted since the conflict erupted more than four years ago.

In recent weeks, residents of this Christian village say life has started to feel a little more normal, thanks to an offensive waged by Lebanese Shiite group Hizbollah against the insurgents just over the border in Syria.

The Hizbollah operation targeting Daesh and the Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front has helped halt the short-range rockets fired periodically at border villages in Lebanon, repeatedly jolted by spillover from the war in Syria.

Yet even with the powerful, Iranian-backed Hizbollah battling the insurgents in the border zone, and the Lebanese army deploying to secure the frontier, the villagers of Qaa are still worried. They say they are ready to fight if necessary.

"There is concern about security here because of the dangers we are seeing around us," said Milad Bitar, a father of three, describing how he watched with concern as jihadists rose to the forefront of the insurgency against Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The fate of Christians in Iraq and Syria, persecuted by Daesh, is ever present in his mind. Earlier in the Syrian conflict, several villagers from Qaa were kidnapped and held for ransom.

"Our borders are very close... they are only 2 kilometres from here," said Bitar, who owns a petrol station.

Like many in Qaa, he has his own gun, bought three years ago, and says he is ready to use it if necessary.

"We need to defend our families."

Joint offensive

Hizbollah, a vital ally to Assad, launched its assault against insurgents in the Qalamoun mountain range in May, in a joint offensive with the Syrian army.

Its involvement is critical to securing western areas of Syria where Assad is trying to shore up his grip as Syrian rebels gain ground elsewhere. On Sunday, the Syrian army and Hizbollah said they had entered the city of Zabadani, which the rebels have held since 2012.

But the Qalamoun offensive also has an important security dimension for Hizbollah in Lebanon, removing the threat posed by the insurgents to areas of political and military importance in the Bekaa Valley.

Hizbollah's role in Syria is highly controversial in Lebanon, where loyalties are split between people who support Assad and others who sympathise with the Sunni rebels trying to unseat him. Its critics say Hizbollah's role in Syria has in fact increased the danger posed by Sunni jihadists to Lebanon.

But those arguments do not appear to carry weight with residents of Qaa and border Shiite villages, who share Hizbollah's concerns about Daesh and Al Qaeda.

"Time has proved to us that we as Christians are in danger," said Mansour Saad, a local official.

The several thousand villagers have decided to fight the insurgents themselves if necessary.

"Here, before we name our babies, we buy them a gun," said Saad, a supporter of Christian politician and Hizbollah ally Michel Aoun. "We have put in place several plans on how to act if we get attacked."

Strategic zone

Areas of Syria across the border from Qaa are of vital importance in the war, which has killed nearly a quarter of a million people and shows no signs of abating.

The Syrian city of Homs lies just 50km to the northeast. The town of Qusair, where Hizbollah intervened to crush Syrian rebels in 2013, is directly over the border. Without control of the Homs region, Assad cannot secure the corridor of territory stretching north from Damascus to the Mediterranean coast.

The price Hizbollah is paying for its involvement in the Syrian war is displayed throughout Shiite villages in the area. Pictures of young men killed in the fighting hang alongside portraits of the group's leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, and banners vowing to end "terrorism" at the border.

In a Sunni village in the area, Lebanese who are sympathetic to the Syrian insurgency and share the view that Hizbollah has brought trouble to their country can be found, but they appear hesitant to speak out.

"Who drove the Syrians out and who destroyed their homes?" said one, voicing sympathy for Syrian refugees who have flooded Lebanon. Declining to give his name, he said others felt the same but were scared to speak.

The outskirts of Qaa serve as a temporary home to thousands of Syrian refugees, some of the more than 1 million who have fled to Lebanon. But there is little sympathy for them in Qaa, where they are seen as a threat.

"We consider them as 'sleeper cells' because they are here in big numbers. We do not know when they might carry weapons and take part in an attack against us," said Saad, the local official.

A little further to the south, thousands more refugees still reside in the Sunni town of Arsal, scene of several days of lethal clashes between the Lebanese army and jihadist groups who launched an attack on the town last August.

In the nearby Shiite village of Labweh, residents recall coming under rocket fire from Arsal during the attack.

"We had to carry weapons then," said Mohamad Sharif, a father of three. "I picked up guns not for Hizbollah or anyone else, but for my children," he said.

Many critics of Hizbollah in the Shiite and Christian border villages have set aside their differences with the group. They see the jihadists as an existential threat due to their proximity to the border.

"I disagree with Hizbollah on several issues but in this battle I am on its side... If it weren't for Hizbollah, there would have been massacres here," Sharif said.

"Let Hizbollah say they need fighters and you will see thousands joining from this region, but they do not need fighters," he said, speaking at his house near Arsal.

"The families here are willing to sacrifice a son, two or even three in this battle, this is an existential war for us here. If we have to lose 100 men, let it be, as long as we get rid of them," he said.

Mustafa, a university student from Labweh, said there was unanimous support for Hizbollah's role fighting at the border. "People may question what Hizbollah is doing in Idlib or Aleppo, but you won't find anyone here who would ask why Hizbollah is fighting on the border now," he said.

TUNIS — The Tunisian jihadist behind last month's massacre of foreigners at a seaside resort had previously worked in tourism, officials said Sunday, as his mother insisted the young man was "brainwashed".

In an interview on Sunday, Prime Minister Habib Essid revealed more details about 23-year-old Seifeddine Rezgui, who gunned down 38 foreign tourists in the June 26 attack.

"We know he was a member of a dance club and was familiar with the tourism sector, having worked in it as an events organiser," Essid told the French-language newspaper La Presse.

Tourists fled in horror as Rezgui pulled a Kalashnikov assault rifle from inside a furled beach umbrella and went on a shooting spree outside a five-star hotel.

The attack at Port El Kantaoui, north of Sousse, killed 30 Britons, three Irish nationals, two Germans, one Belgian, one Portuguese and a Russian.

Rezgui was shot dead by police.

Both the authorities and relatives later described him as having been an apparently normal young man who had been keen on breakdancing.

His mother Radhia Manai, 49, told Britain's Sunday Times her son must have been "brainwashed" by extremists as previously he would not have hurt a mouse.

"When they told me my son had killed all these people I said no, it's impossible," she said.

"I can't believe it. Once there was a mouse in the house and I asked Seifeddine to kill it and he refused saying, 'I can't kill anything’.”

Gunman 'a victim': mother

"God bless the victims, all those people and their poor families, and I feel so sorry but I want to tell them it wasn't my son who did this, it was another Seifeddine," she said.

She said he was "a victim like all the others".

A resident near where his parents live in the town of Gaafour had previously told AFP that Rezgui worked "in tourism in the area of Kantaoui", where the attack is thought to have been planned, although there had been no confirmation of this from another source.

The attack on the beach and around the swimming pools of the Riu Imperial Marhaba Hotel was claimed by the Daesh group.

The authorities have admitted that the transformation of an apparently normal young man caused amazement in Tunisia.

Essid pledged to La Presse "substantive work... on culture and education", in addition to economic reforms.

"We now know what causes individuals to become involved in extremism, be it financial difficulties or religious ideology," he said.

"We are also studying ways of 'deradicalising' our young people who return from Syria."

On Saturday, eight days after the deadly rampage, President Beji Caid Essebsi declared a state of emergency, saying the attack had left Tunisia facing a "special type of war".

The measure, effective from Saturday for a 30-day period, allows authorities to bar strike action and public meetings deemed dangerous to public order and to increase controls on the media.

"There is a real fear that declaring the state of emergency will lead to the criminalisation of social protests," said Hamza Meddeb of the Carnegie Middle East Centre.

"The problem in Tunisia is the lack of a national anti-terrorism strategy that would put in place real intelligence gathering and control of sensitive sites," he said.

Police gun 'jammed' 

On Friday, Essid had admitted there were security failings, telling the BBC: "The time of the reaction — this is the problem."

Witnesses had said at least 30 minutes elapsed from the time the first shots were fired until the police arrived.

Essid told La Presse that security agents had tried to intervene when the attack unfolded, but that a weapon jammed.

"It has to be said that national guard members on an inflatable boat intervened very quickly.

"They fired at the assailant but didn't hit him... then their gun jammed."

As for rapidly bringing in reinforcements, "to reach the resort of Port El Kantaoui we had to cross the entire city of Sousse on Friday at noon", Essid told the paper.

"An investigation is now under way to define responsibilities for the delay," he said.

VIENNA — An Iranian nuclear agreement is possible this week if Iran makes the "hard choices" necessary, but if not, the United States remains ready to walk away from the negotiations, US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday.

Speaking after his third meeting of the day with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, Kerry said they had made "genuine progress" in talks over the last few days but "several of the most difficult issues" remain.

"If hard choices get made in the next couple of days, made quickly, we could get an agreement this week, but if they are not made we will not," he said outside the hotel where talks between Iran, the United States and five other powers are being held.

Foreign ministers from Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia began arriving on Sunday evening as the major powers make a push to meet Tuesday's deadline for a final agreement to end the 12-year-old dispute.

Kerry said negotiators were still aiming for that deadline, but other diplomats have said the talks could slip to July 9, the date by which the Obama administration must submit a deal to Congress in order to get an expedited, 30-day review.

The agreement under discussion would require Iran to curb its most sensitive nuclear work for a decade or more in exchange for relief from sanctions that have slashed its oil exports and crippled its economy.

US President Barack Obama's administration, which has been accused of making too many concessions by Republican members of Congress and by Israel, remains ready to abandon the talks, Kerry said.

"If we don't have a deal and there is absolute intransigence and unwillingness to move on the things that are important for us, President Obama has always said we're prepared to walk away," he said.

European officials also said the onus was on Iran to cut a deal. After arriving in Vienna, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told reporters the main question was whether Iran would make "clear commitments" on unresolved issues. 

‘Four or five issues remain

The top US and Iranian diplomats met for a sixth consecutive day on Sunday to try to resolve obstacles to a nuclear accord, including when Iran would get sanctions relief and what advanced research and development it may pursue.

Keeping up a what has been a steady stream of criticism, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the United States and major powers were negotiating "a bad deal".

"It seems that the nuclear talks [with] Iran have yielded a collapse, not a breakthrough," he said according to remarks released by his office, saying the deal would pave the way to Iran making nuclear bombs and increasing regional aggression.

US Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, a Republican, told the CBS "Face the Nation" programme he had urged Kerry to "make sure these last remaining red lines that haven't been crossed — they have crossed so many — do not get crossed".

While they have made some progress on the type of bilateral sanctions relief that Iran may receive, the two sides remain divided on such issues as lifting United Nations sanctions and on its research and development of advanced centrifuges.

"Many of the issues related to sanctions have been resolved, and there are four or five issues that remain including the important topic of ensuring both sides' steps correspond to each other and happen at the same time," Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi was quoted as saying by the ISNA agency.

The major powers suspect Iran of trying to develop a nuclear weapons capability. Iran says its nuclear program is solely for peaceful purposes such as producing medical isotopes and generating electricity.

Diplomats close to the negotiations said they had tentative agreement on a mechanism for suspending US and European Union sanctions on Iran.

But the six powers had yet to agree with Iran on a United Nations Security Council resolution that would lift UN sanctions and establish a means of re-imposing them in case of Iranian non-compliance with a future agreement.

In addition to sanctions, other sticking points include future monitoring mechanisms as well as a stalled UN probe of the possible military dimensions of past Iranian nuclear research.

Another is Iran's demand to be allowed to do research and development on advanced centrifuges that purify uranium for use as fuel in power plants or weapons.

KUWAIT CITY — Kuwait deployed unprecedented security measures around Shiite mosques for Friday prayers following last week's deadly bombing, as the emir attended a rare Shiite-Sunni joint ceremony in a show of unity. 

Shiite mosques in Kuwait City were completely cordoned off, and roads leading to them were closed to traffic, as security men and volunteers stood guard, an AFP reporter said.

A Saudi suicide bomber from the Daesh terror group blew himself in a Shiite mosque last Friday killing 26 people and wounding 227 others in the worst bombing in Kuwait's history.

Shiites make up a round a third of the oil-rich Gulf state's 1.3 million native citizens.

Thousands of Shiite and Sunni worshippers held a rare joint prayer at the Grand Mosque, Kuwait's largest place of worship for Sunnis.

The emir, Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah, attended the noon prayers along with the crown prince, parliament speaker and several Cabinet ministers and lawmakers.

Armoured vehicles, elite forces and policemen stood guard outside the mosque, where the mercury hit 45oC.

All roads leading to the mosque were off limits to vehicles and worshippers were thoroughly searched before they were allowed inside.

Prayer leader Sheikh Waleed Al Ali, a Sunni, called for national unity and urged Muslims to abandon extremist ideology.

"Extremism has led to this bloodshed," he said in his sermon.

Both Sunni and Shiite worshippers stood in rows beside each other, each praying according to their tradition.

"Our message today is that Kuwait is united and nothing will ever succeed to divide us," Abdullah Nuri, a Shiite engineer, told AFP.

"The highly positive reactions by our Sunni brothers after the blast made us very satisfied," Nuri said.

Shiite cleric Abdullah Al Nejada said: "this is a proof that Sunnis and Shiites are the same and that they [terrorists] will not succeed in dividing this country."

Kuwait, declaring itself in a state of war against "terrorism", has placed security forces and the police on high alert.

A large number of suspects have been arrested, and five sent to the public prosecution.

"This is a clear message to terrorists that you will not succeed in your plot. This is the Kuwaiti response to you," MP Khalil Abul told AFP as he left the mosque.

On Wednesday, parliament approved $400 million (360 million euros) in emergency funding for the interior ministry.

Daesh’s Saudi affiliate, the Najd Province, claimed the bombing and identified the assailant as Abu Suleiman Al Muwahhid.

Kuwaiti authorities have named him as Fahd Suleiman Abdulmohsen Al Qabaa and said he was a Saudi born in 1992.

Gulf interior ministers agreed at the end of a meeting in Kuwait early Friday to boost cooperation to fight "terrorism". 

BEIRUT — The Syrian army and the Lebanese Hizbollah militia said they had launched a major ground and air assault on the rebel-held Syrian city of Zabadani on Saturday and were closing in on insurgents holed up inside.

The army, with its Shiite ally Hizbollah, has long sought to wrest control of Zabadani from Sunni rebels who have held it since 2012, a year after the start of the Syrian civil war. The city is near the Lebanese border and the Beirut-Damascus highway that links the countries, and so capturing it would be a major strategic gain for Syrian President Bashar Assad's government.

Footage released on Hizbollah's TV channel Al Manar and Syrian state TV showed large plumes of smoke rising from the city, and the sounds of aerial bombardment and heavy artillery shelling could be heard. New footage showed artillery rounds being fired from high ground in a mountain range that surrounds the Zabadani towards the centre of the city.

The once popular resort city, northwest of the capital Damascus, is one of the rebels' last strongholds along the border. It was part of a major supply route for weapons sent by Syria to Hizbollah before the 2011 outbreak of the Syrian conflict, which has killed over 200,000 people.

The Syrian army said it had inflicted heavy casualties on "the terrorist groups fortified inside the city" and was advancing from several fronts towards their positions.

A hilltop west of Zabadani that overlooks rebel positions, known as Qalat Al Tel, was also captured, the army said.

The rebels said they had planted mines around the city, which is now mostly deserted, and were well prepared to repel the assault.

The assault began at dawn with a heavy barrage of missiles accompanied by dozens of aerial bombings raids and a large deployment of ground troops, rebel sources said.

The insurgents, using ex-Russian army tanks and long-range artillery, pounded army positions and prevented any advance, said Abu Ado from the Islamist Ahrar Al Sham brigade.

"The bombardment is not stopping from the air, from helicopters and missiles fired from artillery vehicles, and they are trying to advance, but God is with us," the rebel commander told Reuters from the battlefield.

The Syrian military and pro-government fighters have regularly clashed with insurgents in the mountainous area north of the capital, and violence from the four-year-old civil war has regularly spilled over into Lebanon. 

The rebel groups in the area include Al Qaeda’s Syrian wing, Al Nusra Front.

Iranian-backed Hizbollah — which has been a crucial ally to Assad, sending fighters to bolster his forces — has in recent months stepped up its assault on rebel outposts along the Qalamoun mountain region straddling the Lebanese Syrian border.

The aim of the campaign was to cut rebel arms supply routes along the rugged border terrain.

A major military campaign by the Syrian army and the Lebanese group to capture Zabadani, which is part of Assad’s effort to shore up his control over western Syria, had been expected in recent days.

The Syrian army is fighting on several other fronts; as well as battling rebels around the southern city of Deraa and the northern city of Aleppo, it has been fighting Daesh as the militant group attempts to seize government-held areas of the northeastern city of Hasaka.

BAGHDAD — Iraqi jets dropped leaflets over Mosul telling residents that Daesh fighters would soon be driven from the northern city, saying details of the operation would be broadcast on a new radio station.

The city has been under Daesh control since the Islamist militants took over in June last year, sweeping through most of Iraq's Sunni Muslim provinces towards Baghdad.

The Shiite-led government has promised a military offensive to retake Mosul but progress has been slow, in part because of Daesh gains elsewhere. In May, they drove the army out of the city of Ramadi, capital of the western province of Anbar.

"The solution, with God's help, is close," said the leaflets, which were issued in the name of the Iraqi army and were dropped over Mosul on Friday. "Your armed forces are at the gate, cooperate with them."
Despite that promise, there has been no sign of an imminent military operation against Daesh in Mosul.

The leaflets also promised a new radio station, Mosul FM, would start broadcasting soon and urged residents to carry a small radio with them at all times to receive instructions about the battle for Mosul.

Mosul residents contacted by telephone said Daesh militants were deployed in the areas of the city where the leaflets were dropped, telling passers-by to stay away.

VIENNA — After months of intense negotiations, global powers and Iran launched into a key weekend of talks Saturday amid signs they may be within sight of a historic nuclear deal to end a 13-year standoff.

While all sides remained cautious, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the world had "never been closer" to reaching an unprecedented accord with his country aimed at blocking Iran's pathways to developing nuclear arms.

In signs of a possible breakthrough on one of the thorniest issues still blocking a deal, the IAEA announced Saturday that it may be able to complete a probe into whether Iran has ever sought nuclear weapons by the end of the year.

In a rare move, Zarif also offered the promise of greater cooperation to tackle other global problems, such as the rise of the Daesh terror group, should the deal be sealed.

Global powers are trying to draw the curtain on almost two years of roller-coaster negotiations, which gathered fresh impetus after President Hassan Rouhani took power in late 2013. 

The aim is to finalise a deal, which would put a nuclear bomb beyond Iran’s reach, in return for lifting a web of biting international sanctions slapped on the Islamic republic, some of which date back to 1995.

Speaking in English from the balcony of the Viennese hotel hosting the talks, Zarif said in a message posted on YouTube that at “this 11th hour, despite some differences that remain, we have never been closer to a lasting outcome”.

“Getting to yes requires the courage to compromise, the self-confidence to be flexible, the maturity to be reasonable,” he said.

But he added that Iran was ready to strike “a balanced and good deal” which could “open new horizons to address important common challenges”.

“Our common threat today is the growing menace of violent extremism and outright barbarism,” he said in a clear reference to the Daesh jihadist group that has overrun parts of Syria and Iraq.

Deal ‘90%’ done

Meanwhile, IAEA chief Yukiya Amano told reporters as he re-joined the nuclear negotiations that progress had been made as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) seeks to ensure that any deal is “technically sound.”
“With the cooperation from Iran I think we can issue a report by the end of the year on the ... clarification of the issues related to possible military dimensions,” Amano told reporters after returning from talks in Tehran earlier this week.

Iran has long denied accusations that it has sought to develop a nuclear bomb and has so far refused to give UN inspectors access to sensitive military sites to verify its claims.

The stand-off has stalled an IAEA probe into the allegations that before 2003, and possibly since, Iran conducted research work into developing nuclear weapons.

Russian diplomats have said the complex accord, which will stretch to at least 20 pages with a slew of technical annexes, is “90 per cent” written.

After missing several deadlines, the so-called P5+1 group — Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States — have now given themselves until Tuesday to conclude the deal.

“We’re really in the endgame of all this,” a senior US administration official told reporters.

“We’re certainly making progress, there’s no doubt about that... but it’s also clear there are still big issues not resolved, which is why people are burning the midnight oil.”
Some outstanding points of contention have been concluded in the past few days. And with teams of experts working around the clock to nail down last hurdles — including the extent and timing of sanctions relief, and how to win access to suspect Iranian nuclear sites — many of the ministers are due back in Vienna on Sunday.

ISMAILIA — Egyptian warplanes killed 25 militants in North Sinai on Saturday, security sources said, as the Egyptian president visited the province after a major escalation of the conflict there.

The sources said the air strikes hit militant targets near the town of Sheikh Zuweid, destroying weapons and explosives caches.

They also said security forces had found about half a tonne of explosives in a tunnel on the border between Sinai and Gaza.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi inspected soldiers and police in El Arish, the provincial capital, on Saturday, the presidency said in statement.

Sisi, dressed in military garb for the first time since becoming president just over a year ago, told troops at least 200 militants had been killed in the fighting in recent days, but added:
“For me to say that things are under control is not enough, things are totally stable.

“I tell Egyptians ... the size of forces here [in Sinai] is 1 per cent of Egypt’s army.”
Militants launched a coordinated assault on military checkpoints in North Sinai on Wednesday, leading to day-long fighting which left more than 100 militants and 17 soldiers dead, the army said.

Egyptian air strikes killed 23 Islamist militants the next day, security sources said.

North Sinai is the epicentre of an insurgency in which a Daesh-affiliated group called Sinai Province is most active. The Sinai Peninsula borders the Gaza Strip, Israel and the Suez Canal.

The insurgency, aimed at toppling the Cairo government, has intensified since the army ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi after mass protests against his rule in 2013.

Government officials have accused Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood of being linked to the recent Sinai attacks and a Cairo bomb that killed Egypt’s top public prosecutor on Monday. The Brotherhood denies any involvement in violence.

“There is a clear coordination and synchronisation in all of the attacks recently carried out between the Brotherhood and its allies and affiliates,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Saturday.

On Friday, Sinai Province said in a statement posted on Twitter by supporters it had launched three Grad rockets towards “occupied Palestine”. Reuters could not immediately verify the authenticity of the statements.

An Israeli military source said the rockets landed in Israel without causing any casualties and had been fired from Sinai. 

RAFAH, Gaza Strip — Gaza's Hamas rulers on Friday allowed a pair of lion cubs en route to a wildlife sanctuary in Jordan back into the Palestinian coastal strip after the animals and their entourage had been stuck for several hours on no-man's land at a Gaza-Israel border crossing.

Earlier in the day, the cubs were taken from Gaza resident Saed Eldin Al Jamal, who had kept them over a year as pets at his family's home in the border town of Rafah, and transported to the Erez crossing with Israel.

By the time they arrived at the border, the Israeli side had closed and the cubs remained on no-man's land after Hamas guards refused to let them back into the Palestinian territory.

But after several hours, Hamas allowed them back in and the cubs' entourage checked into a Gaza hotel, together with the lions in crates, to wait there until the Israeli crossing reopens on Sunday.

The Israeli security branch responsible for the crossings said the lions and their entourage showed up out of the blue after the crossing had closed and without any prior coordination and appropriate preparations, unlike in a previous case involving lions.

Al Jamal had bought the cubs when they were a month old from a zoo in the Gaza town of Rafah, after it was hit during last summer's war between Hamas and Israel.

He said the original owners of the small South Jungle Zoo were worried they eventually would not be able to afford to buy meat to feed the cubs as they grew.

The pair — the female, Mona, and her brother, Max — became well known across the Palestinian coastal strip as Al Jamal took them to parks or the beach where children who were brave enough would come up to pet them.

His family kept the cubs in their small, one-floor home inside a crowded refugee camp in Rafah, where they quickly became star attractions. Scores of visitors came to see the cubs play with Al Jamal's sons and grandchildren in the camp's narrow alleys.

Earlier Friday at their Rafah home, Al Jamal cried as he gave up the cubs to Amir Khalil from the British charity Four Paws International, which was to take them to Jordan.

The charity had been trying for months to convince Al Jamal to hand over the cubs. As time passed and concerns grew that the lions would become too big and attack people, Al Jamal relented and agreed to "donate" them in return for about $2,500.

Before the entourage with the cubs departed, Al Jamal's 17-year-old son Ibrahim burst into tears as he hugged and kissed Mona good-bye.

Khalil told The Associated Press the cubs were a danger to the health and well-being of the Al Jamals, especially the children, and needed a place that was better for them, too.

Last September, Khalil had helped send lions from Gaza to the same Jordan sanctuary, that time a trio of scrawny lions from the Al Bisan zoo in Beit Lahiya.

"A lion living in a flat is not a normal thing," Khalil said on Friday. "The lion doesn't need to sleep on tiles, but on grass, sand or savanna."

Most of the zoo animals in Gaza have been hauled into the isolated territory through smuggling tunnels linking the strip with Egypt. In one famous scene captured on film, Gazans used a crane to lift a camel over the border fence by one of its legs as the animal writhed in agony.

Khalil said there remain more than 45 lions in Gaza, living in makeshift zoos, even homes, often being looked after by untrained staff.