Music Gives Gaza Children Respite From Horrors of War 

Ruaa Hassouna plays music for Palestinian children on her oud (Ud, or oriental lute) as Palestinian children participate in an activity aimed to support their mental health, amid continuing battles between Israel and the militant group Hamas, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on December 18, 2023. (AFP)
Ruaa Hassouna plays music for Palestinian children on her oud (Ud, or oriental lute) as Palestinian children participate in an activity aimed to support their mental health, amid continuing battles between Israel and the militant group Hamas, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on December 18, 2023. (AFP)
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Music Gives Gaza Children Respite From Horrors of War 

Ruaa Hassouna plays music for Palestinian children on her oud (Ud, or oriental lute) as Palestinian children participate in an activity aimed to support their mental health, amid continuing battles between Israel and the militant group Hamas, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on December 18, 2023. (AFP)
Ruaa Hassouna plays music for Palestinian children on her oud (Ud, or oriental lute) as Palestinian children participate in an activity aimed to support their mental health, amid continuing battles between Israel and the militant group Hamas, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on December 18, 2023. (AFP)

It takes a while but slowly the children gathered around volunteer entertainer Ruaa Hassouna in a Gaza camp start clapping along as her music offers some respite from the horrors around them.

Smiles light up the faces of the children, huddled amid the tents outside the south Gaza town of Rafah which shelter hundreds of thousands of Palestinians driven from their homes by more than two months of relentless Israeli bombardment.

Hassouna is part of a troupe of more than a dozen volunteer entertainers who travel from camp to makeshift camp on a mission to provide children with some escape, however brief, from the death and destruction they have witnessed.

The 23-year-old plays the oud, a lute-like stringed instrument popular across the Middle East. Other volunteers entertain the children with slapstick, acrobatics, story-telling or dance.

"We use whatever means we can to remove the children from the war," says the 23-year-old. "The aim of getting them to sing is to alleviate their stress."

Hassouna says that when her young audiences hear her oud, they "no longer hear the hum of the drones" deployed by the Israeli army, instead immersing themselves in the music.

The United Nations says children make up half of the 1.9 million Palestinians displaced since the onset of the Israel-Hamas war.

They have been forced to abandon their daily routines and live under Israeli bombardment since Hamas's October 7 attacks on Israel killed about 1,140 people, according to an AFP count based on Israel figures.

'I want my childhood back'

Hassouna's troupe travels to a different camp every day, putting on a three-hour performance in each.

"It's an important project because, from what we've observed, the psychological state of the children is very bad," said returning expatriate Awni Farhat, the person behind the initiative.

This space "allows them to unburden themselves of the psychological problems created by this war", said Farhat, who lives in the Netherlands but returned to Gaza during a week-long humanitarian truce in late November.

The UN children's agency, UNICEF, has described the Gaza Strip as "the most dangerous place in the world" for a child.

Speaking after a two-week visit to the besieged coastal enclave, UNICEF spokesman James Elder said he had witnessed children hospitalized for amputations who were then "killed in those hospitals" by Israeli bombardments.

The health ministry in the Hamas-run territory says more than 19,667 people have been killed in Gaza during the war, most of them women or children.

Many of the children in the troupe's audiences are hardened beyond their years, their innocence shattered by fear and bereavement.

"I want to forget my worries and forget the people I've lost," said 15-year-old Nizar Shaheen, adding that he felt "suffocated" by life in the camps.

"I want to live my childhood like we did before," he said, adding: "We don't know where to go. Today, there's no food, no water, there's nothing."



Beloved Zurich Zoo Gorilla Euthanized after Years of Declining Health

FILE - N'Gola, the silverback male of the gorilla group at Zurich Zoo celebrates his 40th birthday on Wednesday, June 21, 2017, in Zurich. (Siggi Bucher/Keystone via AP, file)
FILE - N'Gola, the silverback male of the gorilla group at Zurich Zoo celebrates his 40th birthday on Wednesday, June 21, 2017, in Zurich. (Siggi Bucher/Keystone via AP, file)
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Beloved Zurich Zoo Gorilla Euthanized after Years of Declining Health

FILE - N'Gola, the silverback male of the gorilla group at Zurich Zoo celebrates his 40th birthday on Wednesday, June 21, 2017, in Zurich. (Siggi Bucher/Keystone via AP, file)
FILE - N'Gola, the silverback male of the gorilla group at Zurich Zoo celebrates his 40th birthday on Wednesday, June 21, 2017, in Zurich. (Siggi Bucher/Keystone via AP, file)

The Zurich Zoo’s beloved gorilla of more than 40 years has been put down after a long struggle with declining health, a zoo official in the Swiss city said this week.
N’Gola was 47 and one of the oldest male gorillas in European zoos, said Zurich Zoo director Severin Dressen.
He was a Western lowland gorilla — a subspecies of the great apes found in Africa and listed as critically endangered — and because of his mature age he was a silverback, after the gray hair on his back, The Associated Press reported.
N'Gola had suffered a host of health ailments, including arthritis, a heart condition and a tapeworm infection. He had been on painkillers for several years, eating less, and losing weight and muscle mass.
“It’s a hard decision to euthanize a silverback,” Dressen said.
"We’ve seen a crash in the wild over the span of three generations of 80% of the population," Dressen said about the decline of gorillas in the wild. Zoos can be helpful for research and public education about species protection, he added.
N'Gola was born in captivity and fathered 34 children. He was known for his sensitive side, taking “care of his harem, his group of females,” Dressen said.
In 2012, the female Nache in his harem suffered a burst appendix during advanced pregnancy, and both she and the unborn baby gorilla died, according to the Swiss newspaper Neue Zuricher Zeitung.
N’Gola spent weeks whimpering through the zoo enclosure looking for her, the report said.
Dressen also recalled a time when N'Gola looked after a baby gorilla in the group. "The mother wasn’t there, and he kind of — which is not a typical silverback behavior — took care of that baby.”
As for humans, N'Gola mostly ignored "other bipedal species on the other side of the glass” of his enclosure, Dressen said.