A Spanish tourist was crushed to death by a herd of elephants inside South Africa\u2019s Pilanesberg National Park after he left his vehicle to take a close-up photo of the breeding animals, local police said. <\/p>\n
Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia identified the tourist as Carlos Luna, whom it said was from Zaragoza. <\/p>\n
The Pilanesberg Game Reserve is South Africa\u2019s fourth-largest park and a popular tourist destination. It is also home to more than 7,000 animals, according to its website. <\/p>\n
Police said that while touring the park, the man and his passengers \u201cspotted three elephants with three calves,\u201d adding that \u201cthe man stopped the vehicle, alighted and went closer to take pictures\u201d before he was attacked and killed by the herd. <\/p>\n
The province\u2019s tourism board said in a statement that the Spaniard \u201cdid not heed the warnings\u201d of \u201chis fellow passengers, and occupants from two other vehicles that were at the sighting\u201d before approaching the elephants \u201cthat were feeding a distance from the road.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cAn adult elephant cow charged at the man, who then ran \u2026 (but) was unfortunately not able to escape or evade the elephant, which was now joined by the whole herd, and was caught and trampled to death,\u201d the board said. <\/p>\n
It added that the elephants left the scene afterward and did not attack anyone. <\/p>\n
\u201cStatements by witnesses who observed the whole incident further suggest that the female elephant that charged and attacked might have done so to protect the herd and young ones.\u201d <\/p>\n
Plans are being made to repatriate the tourist\u2019s body, the Spanish newspaper said, citing officials. <\/p>\n
Elephant attacks are not rare in South Africa. <\/p>\n
In 2019, a suspected poacher was attacked and killed by an elephant, and his body eaten by lions in the northeastern Kruger National Park, authorities said at the time. <\/p>\n
In the same year, a security guard was similarly crushed to death by an elephant at a mine in the country\u2019s Limpopo province. <\/p>\n
Other parts of Southern Africa have witnessed similar tragedies. Three months ago, an elderly American woman was killed after an elephant charged at a vehicle transporting tourists inside Zambia\u2019s largest national park. <\/p>\n
The North West tourism board said it was \u201csaddened\u201d by the incident at the Pilanesberg park, urging tourists to \u201crespect distance between vehicles and animals and \u2026 to only alight in specially designated areas.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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A Spanish tourist was crushed to death by a herd of elephants inside South Africa\u2019s Pilanesberg National Park after he left his vehicle to take a close-up photo of the breeding animals, local police said. Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia identified the tourist as Carlos Luna, whom it said was from Zaragoza. The Pilanesberg Game Reserve <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4938,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4937","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}