Sumatran elephants kill three people

Sumatran elephants kill three people

JAKARTA: Elephants in a forest in Riau province have killed
three people in two days, an official of the province's natural
conservation office said Friday.

"Two people were killed three days ago in a forest in Rokan
Hulu district while another was killed yesterday in the same
forest but at a different location," said Lukman of the Riau
province nature conservation office.

He said that the jungle is believed to be home to a herd of
about 30 elephants and that human activity has encroached on
their habitat, prompting the violence.

"The victims were said to have entered the forest to seek wood
early in the morning, when the elephants are usually still
resting. They must have startled the elephants who then attacked
them," Lukman said.

Wild elephants are still found in the jungles of the Sumatran
provinces of Lampung, Aceh, North Sumatra, Bengkulu, South
Sumatra and Riau.

Conservationists say the elephants's habitat were increasingly
taken over by resettlement, plantation and industrial forest
estates. -- AFP