Forest rangers in India have deployed drones to track wolves after nine people, mostly children, were killed by the animals in recent weeks, officials said Sunday.
The latest victim was a 10-month-old girl who was snatched by a wolf in Bahraich district of northern Uttar Pradesh state on Saturday while she was sleeping beside her mother, they said.
The child was later found dead in a field.
A day earlier, a five-year-old boy was snatched in plain sight of his mother from outside their home.
The child, found mauled in a sugarcane field, died on the way to hospital.
Officials said the attack followed the same pattern seen across a cluster of villages reporting similar incidents since September.
The latest deaths raise the toll from suspected wolf attacks in Bahraich to at least nine in three months, according to police, forest officials and media reports.
The victims also included an elderly couple.
Forest Officer Ram Singh Yadav told AFP on Sunday that authorities have deployed drones, camera traps and shooters in the area.
“The behavior of wolves seems to have changed. Of late, they are seen active in daytime, which is strange,” Yadav said.
Other forest officials said the animals appeared unusually bold.
Bahraich saw a similar wave of attacks last year, with a pack of wolves killing at least nine people, including a one-year-old boy and three-year-old girl, and injuring several others. At that time, authorities warned people against sleeping out in the open or moving around at night alone, but some houses in the area don’t even have doors and many lack indoor toilets, so residents have little option but to go out to relieve themselves in the night.
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The grassland plains of Bahraich district lie about 30 miles south of the border with Nepal, where thick forests cover the Himalayan foothills.
Experts say wolves attack humans or livestock only as a last resort when they are starving, preferring less dangerous prey such as small antelopes.
The majority of India’s roughly 3,000 wolves survive outside protected areas, often in close proximity to people.
The animals, also known as the plains wolf and listed as vulnerable, are smaller than the stronger Himalayan wolf and can be mistaken for other species such as jackals.
Villagers in Bahraich say they now live in mortal fear of the wolves lurking near their homes.
“Our children are not safe even inside the house,” one resident said.
“We just want the attacks to stop.”
While attacks by big cats and elephants are not rare in India, wolf attacks are unusual. More than 300 people were killed in tiger attacks in the country between 2018 and 2022.
Experts say the expansion of towns and villages into wilderness areas, reducing the natural habitats and hunting grounds of many species, is a major factor behind the increasing people-animal encounters.