Jumbo kills mother, spares infant
HARRIET KIAMA
Daily News; Saturday,October 27, 2007 @00:04

CALL it a miracle or selective attack but a rogue elephant trampled to death a woman in Mtwara last Wednesday leaving her one and a half year old baby slung to her back unscathed in the fatal attack by the beefy and dangerous beast.

Zena Said (37) of Kitoe village in Mtwara Rural District was tending her farm at about 10am when the jumbo broke through bushes, knocked her to the ground and made short work of flattening her body as it repeatedly pounded her on the left side with the infant flung to the right, the Regional Police Commander, Mr Ephrahim Mrema, said.

The child was found by villagers, alive and unharmed, hours after the attack, Mr Mrema said.

An elephant also killed Afat Hussein (50) more or less at about the same time, also as he tilled his land at the village. It was not certain whether the same elephant was responsible for the two deaths but rangers are now hunting the killer elephant or elephants.
Elephants, which have extremely poor sight but very high sense of smell, usually move in large herds. Cows with calves are extremely dangerous but so also are rogue jumbos.

It is one of the paradoxes of wildlife in Africa that some of the most dangerous animals are the total herbivores like elephants and buffaloes. Beasts of prey like lions and leopards would often ignore humans if they have had a good kill. They would only lunge forward if they felt their life was threatened.

Elephants on the other hand, which are extremely rigid in their directional path, appear to attack to demand the right of way and to enforce exclusive territorial right.

Nevertheless, man and beast coexist at Kitoe village with hardly any conflict. The two fatal attacks therefore, have puzzled many people and in the minds of villagers, left many questions unanswered.

Some elephants inhabit Nanyumbu District’s Lukwika game reserve but of late quite a number have migrated from Mozambique across the Ruvuma River where water level has dropped considerably.