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Hair-raising footage, captured on a smartphone, shows the gigantic animals and their little ones struggle to find a way out of the village.
It shows the bizarre moment the animals had wandered into the human habitat in Numaligarh in the hilly state of Assam, India, after they lost their way.
The village is just two miles from the forest and instead of hiding in their homes, stunned villagers ran out of their homes armed with sticks to chase the elephants.
Mahesh Kumar, who suffered a great loss to his shop in the chaos, said: ‘The elephants started running impulsively when men from forest department reached the spot for our rescue.
‘The chaos resulted in a huge loss as many shops and houses were damaged.’
Forest officials were called in who took the charge of the situation.
Jayanta Goswami, beat forest officer of Numaligarh, said: ‘Incidents like these have happened in the past.
‘This is the paddy season in the state and elephants come out of the forests in search of food and end up in villages where paddy is grown.
‘In the recent incident, the number of the elephants were huge but luckily, none of them attacked any villager.
‘We have learnt of some damages to the houses but that would be compensated. It becomes really difficult to control an elephant if it loses its cool. We are glad there was no injury this time.’
Assam, the densely forested state, is known as the natural habitat for the wild elephants in the country with a recorded population of 5,620.
But with an increasing population and fast developed townships, incidents of wild animals entering the villages in search of food have become very common of late.
While they do damage the crops and fields, many also lose their lives after falling in deep pits in construction sites or electrocuted by electric poles.