Thursday, May 31, 2007

Elephants unlikely foe for Sri Lanka's war-displaced

Reuters
May 30 2007

Tamil farmer Sabaratnam Somaratnam abandoned his home in east Sri Lanka fearing it might be shelled.

He returned after months in a refugee camp to find the house flattened, and stunned to find the destruction had nothing to do with the fighting between government forces and Tamil Tigers.

"Look," he said, gesturing at a large round depression in the dry earth. "There are elephant's footprints. There's dung all over the place.

"We had stored bags of rice in our house. The elephant has destroyed our house to get to it," he added, his sarong trailing in dusty, parched earth mixed with tell-tale rice grains.

Behind him, his house lies in a ruined jumble of baked earth bricks and buckled iron sheeting.

He, his wife and their five children must now live in a rudimentary shed covered with a tarpaulin, much like the one they have lived in for months after fleeing the war.

His neighbours suffered the same fate.

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