Municipal officials told residents of the Arab neighborhood, located on the Palestinian side of the separation barrier, that they should bring the dogs to the Shuafat checkpoint, from where the city's veterinary services would take the dogs.
"A pack of stray dogs entered the neighborhood yesterday," said Jamal Sanduka, one of the residents. "Two [of the dogs] entered the yard of a house and killed almost 20 ducks there. They also chased children in the neighborhood," he explained.
According to Sanduka, a number of neighbors managed to capture and cage two of the dogs, but despite repeated calls to Jerusalem's municipal hotline, the city refused to send its workers to Ras Hamis.
"We are residents of Jerusalem. We pay all the taxes, but since they surrounded us with a fence, no one is willing to come here any more. There are 40,000 people living here, and they do not receive any services - not from the city and not from the Palestinian Authority. When a house here caught fire a few days ago, we called the East Jerusalem fire department but they told us that for security reasons they cannot enter the neighborhood. If municipal employees are not willing to come the city must hire a private contractor to do the work, but no one is doing even that," Sanduka said yesterday.
Jerusalem municipal spokesman Gidi Shmerling confirmed the report. "The Ras Hamis neighborhood is on the other side of the separation fence. According to instructions from the security authorities, it is not allowed to enter neighborhoods on the other side of the separation fence except when accompanied by security forces," responded Shmerling.
"In this case," he added, "since the complainant stated that the dogs had be captured and were in his hands, then in order to save the time required to coordinate with the security forces - which could possibly take days - he was offered to bring the dogs to the checkpoint so that the veterinary team could collect them."
City officials claimed yesterday that the last time a veterinary team entered the neighborhood accompanied by security forces, they were forced to retreat after an "extremely violent" attack by local residents.