Two men were killed in separate wild elephant attacks in the Meegalewa and Aralaganwila areas, police said on Friday.
A 77-year-old man died after being attacked by a wild elephant in the Thammitagama area in Meegalewa. Police said he was attacked on Thursday night while standing in front of his home.
In the second incident, a 61-year-old man was killed by a wild elephant in the Ranaviru Village area in Aralaganwila. Police said he was attacked while returning from fishing at the Pimburattewa Reservoir.
Police did not name either victim, and no details were given on whether the animals involved had been identified or tracked.
Context
Both deaths fall within Sri Lanka’s long-running human-elephant conflict, which claims scores of human lives and a larger number of elephant lives every year. The two locations sit in the dry-zone belt where cultivation, irrigation tanks and elephant range overlap most closely.
The circumstances in each case are typical of the pattern recorded across the region. Attacks frequently occur after dark near homes on the edge of a village, and around reservoirs and tank bunds where people fish or travel on foot at dusk and elephants come to drink.
A note on sourcing
No other verified newsroom whose publication date could be confirmed had filed on these two deaths at the time of writing. Searches for the incidents return reports of earlier fatal elephant attacks in the same areas — including a February 2025 attack that killed two elderly siblings in Aralaganwila. Those are separate, older events and are not cited here.
