A five-months pregnant woman and her unborn baby were crushed to death by a herd of elephants in Indonesia.
Mother-of-three Karsini, 33, was tapping rubber trees with her husband Rasum on Sunday when the herd of some 15 jumbos entered their plantation in South Sumatra.
The wife banged empty jerrycans together like cymbals in a desperate attempt to scare off the animals, each weighing up to 4,000kg.
But the wild animals, scared on enraged by the banging, charged the couple and brutally trampled Karsini and her unborn baby to death.
After the herd moved away, villagers in the Musi Rawas Regency collected Karsini’s corpse from the forest.
Karsini (L) was tapping rubber trees with her husband Rasum (R) when she was attacked
She had tried to deter the elephants by banging cans together, but appeared to enrage them
File photo. A Sumatran elephant in the forests of Indonesia
Muara Lakitan Police Chief, AKP M Abdul Karim, said: ‘It is known that the victim was five months pregnant.
‘She suffered severe wounds on her stomach and waist, and her womb had shifted to the left.
‘Her husband managed to save himself.’
He added that wild elephants were known to frequent the region in herds of up to 100.
Officers from the Natural Resources Conservation Agency (BKSDA) were at the scene to investigate, he said.
The police chief urged residents to stay clear of wandering elephants instead of trying to scare them away.
He said: ‘Don’t disturb them, don’t try to chase them away.
‘They are only looking for food. If you see an elephant, immediately move away.’
The Sumatran elephant is a critically endangered subspecies of the Asian elephant, native to the Indonesian island of Sumatra, just south of Malaysia.
According to the World Wildlife Fund, Sumatran elephants are on the brink of extinction with only about 2,400-2,800 left in the world.
Habitat loss due to deforestation and human activities, along with poaching, are the primary threats to its survival.
It was previously classified as endangered under the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List.
The archipelago nation faces an ongoing battle against wildlife crime and several elephant poisoning cases have been reported in recent years, including one in 2019 when a Sumatran elephant was found decapitated with its tusks ripped off.
The elephant population is also threatened by rampant poachings because of their tusks, which are prized in the illegal wildlife trade.
Rampant deforestation has reduced the critically endangered elephants’ natural habitat and brought them into increasing conflict with humans.
Villagers in the Musi Rawas Regency collected Karsini’s corpse from the forest
An area is taped off after the tragic death of mother-of-three Karsini on Sunday
The elephant’s conservation status was changed to critically endangered as its population reportedly decline by at least 80 per cent in the last 75 years.
There are an estimated 1,500 Sumatran elephants left in the wild.
Elephants are rarely aggressive but can act out if they feel threatened, or to protect their young.
In India alone, around 400 people die each year from clashes with elephants, according to the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
Human development has also pushed wild elephants close to extinction; today, there are between 30,000 and 50,000 elephants left in the world.
The majority live in India, where thousands of captive elephants are forced to work their entire lives in grim conditions, overheating, poorly treated and in some cases beaten for acting out.
