Korba:

A 65-year-old woman from Chhattisgarh’s Korba district became the fifth victim of a savage attack by a wild elephant which had trampled four persons to death in separate incidents in the area over the last month, officials said on Saturday.

In the latest incident that occurred near Baghmara village in the Balco forest range, the pachyderm also trampled two bulls to death, a forest officer said.

The tusker elephant attacked Bhalai Bai and her husband in their hut in an agricultural field near the village on Friday night when they were asleep, said Arvind PM, Divisional Forest Officer, Korba forest division.

Bhalai Bai’s husband survived as he managed to run away from the spot. The elephant also attacked and killed two bulls in the area, he said.

After being alerted about the incident, forest and police personnel rushed to the spot and sent the body for a postmortem.

The family of the killed woman was given financial assistance of Rs 25,000 and the rest of Rs 5.75 lakh will be paid later as per the procedure, the forest officer added.

Notably, the same tusker had trampled an elderly man to death on September 4 in the Katghora forest division in Korba district, and three women at separate places in the Katghora forest division on August 8.

Forest and police personnel have been keeping a tab on the movement of the pachyderm and engaged in chasing it away from human settlements, officials said.

Human-elephant conflicts in Chhattisgarh, particularly in the northern part of the state, have been a major cause of concern over the last decade. The menace has been spreading its footprint in some districts of the Central region in the past few years.

Surguja, Raigarh, Korba, Surajpur, Mahasamund, Dhamtari, Gariaband, Balod, Balrampur and Kanker districts have witnessed the attack by elephants on humans.

According to the forest department, over 300 people were killed in elephant attacks in Chhattisgarh in the last five years.

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In a terrifying incident, a US tourist from New Mexico was killed by an elephant in Zambia after it attacked her vehicle during a safari drive on Wednesday. Officials reported that the elephant pulled Juliana Gle Tourneau, 64, out of the vehicle and trampled her, Metro reported. The incident occurred near the Maramba Cultural Bridge in Livingstone when the group had stopped due to traffic caused by an elephant herd.

She was taken to a clinic in Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park, where she was declared dead on arrival. According to a police statement, her injuries included deep wounds on the right shoulder blade and forehead, a fractured left ankle, and a slightly depressed chest.

Ms Tourneau died around 5.50 pm ”after being knocked from a parked vehicle which had stopped due to traffic caused by elephants around the Maramba Cultural Bridge”, Southern Province Police Commissioner Auxensio Daka told Zambian station ZNBC on Friday.

Officials did not say whether anyone else was injured or what led to the elephant’s aggression.

This tragic event marks the second fatal elephant attack on a US tourist in Zambia this year. In March, Gail Mattson, a 79-year-old woman from Minnesota, was killed in a similar incident during a game drive in Zambia’s Kafue National Park. An elephant charged and overturned the truck, resulting in her death and injuries to five others. 

In response to these incidents, Zambian authorities have urged tourists to exercise extreme caution while observing wildlife. Similar concerns have been raised in neighbouring countries like Zimbabwe and Botswana, which have also reported increasing elephant populations and deadly attacks in recent years.

According to experts, human deaths are rare in encounters with elephants. ”This is a freak accident. It’s probably just some sort of coming together of unfortunate circumstances that led to this,” Nikhil Advani, a senior director at the World Wildlife Fund, a nonprofit that works on environmental protection and conservation efforts told the New York Times.