JAKARTA (dpa): A wild elephant trampled an eight-year-old girl on the Indonesian island of Sumatra on Thursday, leaving her with life-threatening injuries, local media reported.
A herd of elephants had previously entered a residential area on the outskirts of Pekanbaru, the capital of Riau province, according to media reports citing authorities.
The accident happened when three elephants appeared in front of the family's house.
"One of them was very aggressive. We ran to the cornfield, but it chased us," her father told the Jakarta Globe newspaper.
His daughter Citra was trampled in the process, suffering severe head injuries and broken bones.
She was taken to a hospital in Pekanbaru, where she underwent emergency surgery. According to media reports, she is in a coma.
Officials from the Riau natural resources conservation agency (BBKSDA) said the elephants probably came from a nearby elephant reserve and were following an old migration route that passes through villages and plantations.
The agency has sent a team to monitor the herd's movements and drive the animals back into the forest.
Human-animal conflicts are not uncommon in Sumatra. Deforestation of the rainforests for palm oil and timber plantations has severely restricted the elephants' habitat.
The Sumatran elephant (Elephas maximus sumatranus) is considered critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). According to the WWF, there are fewer than 2,000 of the species left in the wild worldwide. - dpa
