New Delhi - Five members of a family were trampled to death on Friday by wild elephants that went on a rampage in a village in India's north-eastern state of Assam, a news report said. Wildlife officials told the IANS news agency that two elephants strayed into a village in the western Dhubri district late on Thursday night.
"The elephants first tore apart a mud-and-thatch hut and killed a woman and her two children," Syed Isfaqur Rehman, a local offical told IANS.
"Two more people injured in the attack in an adjacent house belonging to the same family also succumbed at a hospital Friday morning".
The rampaging elephants also damaged nearby paddyfields.
The incident came days after a wild elephant killed a Dutch tourist on a safari in the Kaziranga National Park in the state.
Widespread deforestation and human encroachment compels herds of elephants to move across Indian states. They often raze entire fields of crops, killing villagers who get in their way.
In no other Indian state is the human-elephant conflict as severe as in Assam, which is home to more than 5,000 of the 10,000 elephants found in the country.
According to the latest estimates by Assam's wildlife department, elephants have killed 277 people in the state in the past five years.
More than 269 elephants have died during the same period, many of them poisoned by angry villagers.
