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Elephant named after Osama bin Laden kills five people in India

‘In the past Laden has also attacked our villages and killed people and destroyed our paddy fields,’ villager says

Saturday 02 November 2019 18:36 GMT

Forest officials launched a major operation to track and contain the large mammal (Assam Forest Department/AFP via Getty Images)

An elephant named after Osama bin Laden has trampled five people to death in an Indian village.

The rogue bull, who was nicknamed Laden after the late al-Qaeda leader, attacked the Bolatar village in the north-eastern state of Assam earlier this week.

“But that was not all,” Rajen Rabnha, a local villager, told the Agence France-Presse news agency. “In the past Laden has also attacked our villages and killed people and destroyed our paddy fields.”

Forest officials launched a major operation to track and contain the large mammal.

Drones and domesticated elephants were used to observe Laden from a safe distance.

Where not to visit if you love animals

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1/9Where not to visit if you love animals

Where not to visit if you love animals

Monkey shows

Chimpanzees are forced to perform demeaning tricks on leashes and are often subject to cruel training techniques. Animals who are confined to small, barren enclosures and forced to perform unsurprisingly show symptoms of stress and depression. Chimpanzees have been documented rocking back and forth, sucking their lips, salivating and swaying against enclosure perimeters in distress.

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Where not to visit if you love animals

Marine parks

Some parks confine orcas to concrete tanks and force them to perform meaningless tricks for food - many die in captivity. Orcas are highly intelligent and social mammals who may suffer immensely, both physically and mentally, when they're held in captivity.

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Where not to visit if you love animals

Tiger shows

Tigers are forced to live in an unnatural and barren environment and have to endure interactions with a constant stream of tourists. Since tigers never lose their wild instincts, across the world they are reportedly drugged, mutilated and restrained in order to make them “safe” for the public. However, every year, incidents of tiger maulings are reported at this type of tourist attraction.

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Where not to visit if you love animals

Donkey rides

Sunning on the beach is great for humans – we can take a quick dip or catch a bite to eat when we get too hot or hungry. But it's pure hell for donkeys who are confined to the beach and forced to cart children around on the hot sand. Some donkey-ride operators at beach resorts in the UK even keep the animals chained together at all times.

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Where not to visit if you love animals

Swimming with dolphins

Some marine parks use bottlenose dolphins in performances and offer visitors the opportunity to swim with dolphins. Unfortunately, people are often unaware that these animals are captured in the wild and torn from their families or traded between different parks around the world.

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Where not to visit if you love animals

Canned hunting

Lions are confined to fenced areas so that they can easily be cornered, with no chance of escape. Most of them will have been bred in captivity and then taken from their mothers to be hand-reared by the cub-petting industry. When they get too big, they may be drugged before they are released into a "hunting" enclosure. Because these animals are usually kept in fenced enclosures (ranging in size from just a few square yards to thousands of acres), they never stand a chance of surviving.

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Where not to visit if you love animals

Running of the Bulls

Every year, tourists travel to Pamplona for the Running of the Bulls. The bulls who are forced to slip and slide down the town's narrow cobblestone streets are chased straight into the bullring. They are then taunted, stabbed repeatedly and finally killed by the matador in front of a jeering crowd. The majority of Spaniards reject bullfighting, but tourists are keeping the cruel industry on its last legs.

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Where not to visit if you love animals

Horse-drawn carriages

City streets are no place for horses. The animals toil in all weather extremes, suffering from respiratory distress from breathing in exhaust fumes as well as numerous hoof, leg and back problems from walking on pavement all day long. As easily spooked prey animals, horses subjected to the loud noises and unexpected sounds of city streets are likely to be involved in accidents, even deadly ones.

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Where not to visit if you love animals

Zoos

The zoo community regards the animals it keeps as commodities, and animals are regularly bought, sold, borrowed and traded without any regard for established relationships. Zoos breed animals because the presence of babies draws visitors and boosts revenue, yet often, there's nowhere to put the offspring as they grow, and they are killed, as we saw with Marius the giraffe in Denmark. Some zoos have introduced evening events with loud music and alcohol which disrupt the incarcerated animals even further.

EPA

Assam’s forest minister said a committee including wildlife experts would decide what to do with the elephant.

“We are yet to decide on how to deal with the animal,” Parimal Shuklabaidya said. “There are suggestions that we should tranquillize the animal and take it to forest where there is no human habitation nearby.”

The welfare of the elephant as well as the safety of locals’ would be taken into account, Mr Shuklabaidya added.

Wildlife officials launched drones to observe Laden from a safe distance (Assam Forest Department/AFP via Getty Images)

Laden was spotted in the Kantaka Reserve on Thursday, the Northeast Now wesbsite reported.

“We have located and identified Laden in the reserve, which is about 15km from Tuesday’s incident site,” a forest officer told the news website. “The jumbo was visible for once or twice and then it went inside the jungle. Presently the elephant is trying to stay near its own herd taking shelter at the same reserve.”

Three forest teams were attempting to tranquillise the animal.

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It was not the first time a killer elephant was named after he mastermind behind the 11 September attacks.

Over the last six years, a tuskless bull named Osama killed at least 70 people in Assam.

The elephant’s corpse was discovered in a field near a village last month and it was believed angry villagers had electrocuted it to death.

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