Koh Yao Elephant Care Centre: Tourist dies after being gored while washing elephant at Thailand sanctuary popular with Brit holidaymakers

Blanca Ojanguren Garcia, 22, was washing the animal at the Koh Yao Elephant Care & House, a sactuary popular with British holidaymakers, when it gored her with its tusk. Experts believe the elephant could have lashed out after becoming stressed by the pressure of living and interacting with tourists outside its ecosystem, the newspaper Clarin reports.

Washing and bathing with elephants are popular tourist activities in the holiday destination Thailand. Blanca was on a university exchange programme in Taiwan as part of the fifth year of a Law and International Relations Degree at the University of Navarra, based in the northern Spanish city of Pamplona.

She was born and grew up in the city of Valladolid 200 miles south-west of Pamplona. Respected local paper El Norte de Castilla said she came from a military family. Other Spanish media reports said her boyfriend was a soldier who witnessed the attack.

The Spanish Foreign Ministry confirmed the tragedy, saying: “We can confirm the tragic death in an accident of a Spanish tourist. The Spanish Consulate in Bangkok is in contact with the victim’s relatives and is offering all the necessary consular assistance, as is normal in these types of circumstances.”