Tigers kill three in Bangladesh
Tigers have killed three people and 50 cattle in villages surrounding Bangladesh's Sundarbans mangrove forests, officials have said.
Police, forest guards and volunteers are now guarding villages by lighting fires to stop the man-killers.
Forest officials said tigers might have strayed into villages in search of food, which is becoming scarcer in the Sundarbans reserve because of deforestation and human encroachment.
About three million people live in and around the Bangladesh part of the 2,320-sq mile mangrove swamps.
The Forest Ministry said after conducting a tiger census in the wetlands in 2005 that only around 400 tigers are left in the Bangladesh part of the Sundarbans.
The Sundarbans, which stretches into India's eastern state of West Bengal, is about 250 miles southwest of Dhaka and home to a wide variety of wildlife.
It forms a fragile ecosystem that is being ravaged by the pressures of population and weak enforcement of environmental regulations.
© Independent Television News Limited 2007. All rights reserved.
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