An army sergeant who was home on leave was killed by a wild elephant on Saturday (7) while fishing with his younger brother at the Ampara tank, Ampara Police say.
The dead man was Ravindra Kumara, 40, a resident of Paragahakele in Ampara who was serving at the Konduwatuwana army camp in the district, Hiru News reported.
The brothers had walked from the Ampara Sama Chaithya area toward the upper reaches of the Ampara tank to fish when the elephant charged them, according to the report. Both men ran, and the sergeant was struck by the animal.
Ampara Police are conducting further investigations.
A second fatal attack in the same district
This is the second reported death from an elephant attack in the Ampara district within a week.
On 5 November, the Sunday Times reported that a man named Ajith Kumara was killed after a group of four was chased by an elephant near the Gal Oya National Park at around 1 p.m. while on their way to fish at the Senanayake Samudraya. One of the group fell while running and was attacked; the others reported him missing to Inginiyagala Police.
These are two separate incidents. They involve different victims, different dates, different water bodies and different police divisions. They are set out together here because the pattern is the same — people walking to a reservoir to fish, in elephant country, on foot.
Context
Human–elephant conflict remains one of Sri Lanka’s most persistent causes of rural death. Official figures reported earlier this month recorded 289 elephant deaths in the first ten months of 2026, with the cause of 95 of them unidentified — the other side of a conflict that kills people and elephants in roughly parallel numbers each year.
Neither report says whether the elephant involved in Saturday’s attack has been located, or whether the area is covered by an electric fence.
