GAUHATI, India (AP) -- About 100 wild elephants have converged on a river island in northeast India, demolishing homes, feasting on sugarcane and panicking residents, officials said Saturday.Thousands of villagers were using firecrackers and bonfires to scare away the rampaging animals.
"Dozens of houses have been destroyed in the past three days by adult elephants entering human settlements to look for their wandering calves," said the local magistrate, L.S. Changsan.
Up to 50 families have moved to a local school being used as a refugee camp, Changsan said.
About 150,000 people live on the 338-square mile island of Majuli in the Brahmaputra River, nearly 220 miles east of Assam state's capital, Gauhati.
Officials say the elephants swam to the island from a nearby hill region, beginning their rampage nearly a week ago.
An Elephant Rampage
Elephants are one of my favorite animals, but I'd be more than a bit nervous if a 100 of them decided to hang out in my backyard. If you read the article you'll see a line that says that in one Indian state more than 600 people have been killed by wild elephants over the past 16 years.
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