JHAPA: The number of elephant attacks has risen in Jhapa district that has claimed several human lives in recent years.

People at work, at home and those working in the tea estate have fallen prey to the tuskers.

Chief of Division Forest Office, Jhapa, Meghraj Rai, said that elephants coming from India through Bahundangi forest and the ones staying in the community forests in Jhapa are causing more losses to human lives.

Bahundangi is considered a major gateway for elephants to enter Nepal from the Indian side.

Rai said that eight people lost their lives in the current fiscal year in the elephant attacks while six people had died in the previous fiscal year from the tusker attack.

He added that people are being attacked by the elephants that enter the human settlement in search of food.

In the recent years, elephants have arrived even in the urban areas in the district.

Rai stated that elephant coming to the human settlement is killing more people than those in the herds. This morning too octogenarian Pannadevi lost her life on the spot after being attacked by an elephant while picking flowers in Dhulabari bazaar area, according to Rai.

Likewise, Kamala Dhimal, 38, of Buddhashanti Rural Municipality-5 was injured, the District Police Office said.

She is receiving treatment at Birta City Hospital in Birtamod.

As the elephants are killing more people in the district, the local levels here have paid very little attention to the control of elephant menace.