In Chad, Janjaweed militia from Sudan killed 100 elephants in one afternoon; in Kenya, Somali warlords armed with rocket-propelled grenades killed four wildlife rangers during a bloody raid on herds in the Tana Delta; in Democratic Republic of Congo, a whole host of rebel groups have turned the country's dwindling elephant population into a new cash crop.
The fight to protect Africa's elephants has just got more dangerous. Across the continent, armed groups linked to civil wars and conflicts are using the illegal ivory trade to fund their activities. Groups like the Janjaweed, responsible for carrying out countless atrocities in Sudan's western Darfur region, are now the "greatest problem for the protection of elephants in Africa", according to Michael Wamithi, the head of the elephant programme for the International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw).
"Small groups of people used to kill elephants and take their ivory for purely commercial reasons," he said. "Now it is a very different thing. It is organised and it is funding these dangerous groups." In one incident in Chad's Zakouma National Park a gang of more than 30 Janjaweed men on horseback killed more than 100 elephants in a single attack.
"It was a targeted operation, very well planned," Mr Wamithi said. "To kill that many elephants in one go takes a lot of organisation. We have not seen attacks like this before."
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