Crying elephants save tourists at beach resort

KHAO LAK - Agitated elephants felt the tsunami coming, and their sensitivity saved about a dozen tourists in Thailand from the fate of thousands killed by the giant waves.

"I was surprised because the elephants had never cried before," mahout Dang Salangam said yesterday on Khao Lak beach of the eight elephants who give rides to tourists.

The elephants started trumpeting - in a way Dang, 36, and his wife Kulada, 24, said could only be described as crying - at first light, about the time the huge earthquake cracked open the seabed off Indonesia's Sumatra island.

They calmed down, but started wailing again about an hour later and could not be comforted.

Those elephants with tourists aboard headed for the hill behind the resort beach, where at least 3800 people, more than half of them foreigners, would soon be killed.

The elephants that were not working broke their hefty chains.

Around a dozen tourists were also running towards the hill from the Khao Lak Merlin Resort, and were put on the elephants who stopped about 1km inshore.

- REUTERS