Spanish Tourist Attacked by Elephant!
Bangkok, Jan 3 (EFE).-
A Spanish tourist died Friday after being attacked by an elephant while giving it a bath in a pachyderm center on the island of Yao Yai, in southwestern Thailand, police and center sources said.
Officer Charan Bangprasert of the Yao Yai police station told EFE that a Spanish woman died in an incident with an elephant, without specifying her age.
A worker at the Koh Yao Elephant Care center explained to EFE that the tourist was bathing the elephant when it stabbed her with its tusk, causing her to succumb with her injuries later.
Washing elephants, or bathing with them, are popular activities at some leisure centers in Thailand, where pachyderms also take part in tourist shows.
Most elephant incidents usually involve wild specimens, which sometimes cross into areas inhabited by people, due to the loss of natural habitat.
Over the past 12 years, there have been 240 deaths from wild elephant attacks, including 39 fatalities in 2024, according to the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation data cited by The Nation.
According to estimates of the Department, more than 4,000 wild elephants live in Thailand’s sanctuaries, national parks and nature reserves, which is still well below the 300,000 pachyderms that populated the country more than a century ago.
A similar number of domestic elephants is also estimated in the country, most of them used in activities catering to tourists.
Decades ago, thousands of elephants were used in the timber industry, but when logging was banned in 1989 pachyderms began to be displayed in the streets to ask for alms -something that is no longer observed in the country- and for entertainment purposes. EFE
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