A Spanish tourist has died after being attacked by an elephant she was bathing in Thailand.
Blanca Ojanguren Garcia, 22, was washing the animal at the Koh Yao Elephant Care & House, a sactuary popular with British holidaymakers, when it gored her with its tusk.
Experts believe the elephant could have lashed out after becoming stressed by the pressure of living and interacting with tourists outside its ecosystem, the newspaper Clarin reports.
Washing and bathing with elephants are popular tourist activities in the country.
Blanca was on a university exchange programme in Taiwan as part of the fifth year of a Law and International Relations Degree at the University of Navarra, based in the northern Spanish city of Pamplona.
She was born and grew up in the city of Valladolid 200 miles south-west of Pamplona.
Respected local paper El Norte de Castilla said she came from a military family. Other Spanish media reports said her boyfriend was a soldier who witnessed the attack.
The Spanish Foreign Ministry confirmed the tragedy, saying: ‘We can confirm the tragic death in an accident of a Spanish tourist.
‘The Spanish Consulate in Bangkok is in contact with the victim’s relatives and is offering all the necessary consular assistance, as is normal in these types of circumstances.’
Ko Yao Yai where the incident happened is a Thai island in the Andaman Sea, halfway between Phuket and Krabi.
It is famed for its sandy shores, mangroves, rubber plantations and fishing villages.
In July, a Spanish tourist died after being attacked by an elephant he was taking a picture of during a South African safari holiday with his fiancee.
Spanish officials later confirmed the dead man was from the town of Ejea de los Caballeros near Zaragoza and he was named as 43-year-old cleaning firm boss Carlos Luna.
The tragedy happened on Sunday afternoon in Pilanesberg National Park around 125 miles north-west of Johannesburg.
The animal trampled on its victim as he reportedly got out of his car to take photographs of a group of elephants.
Police said at the time the dead man, his fiancee and two other women were driving through the reserve when they stopped after spotting three elephants and two cubs.
The other occupants of the car were unharmed.
Spanish safari agency boss Alex Lacadena told a Spanish paper covering the area Mr Luna was from he had been informed the attack happened because the matriarch elephant felt threatened when they were approached.
He said: ‘The first rule of a safari is not to get out of the vehicle or get up.
‘When you’re in a 4×4 wild animals don’t see people, they see a block and they only react when you do something out of the norm.’
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