A seven-year-old girl is dead after an elephant at a Moroccan zoo hurled a rock at her head.
The girl, whose name hasn’t been released, was standing outside the animal enclosure with her family when an elephant picked up the stone and threw it over the fence, the zoo said in a statement on their website.
She was then taken to hospital, where she died a few hours later.
“It’s with great sadness that the Rabat Zoo confirms the accidental death of a little girl after an elephant threw a stone at her,” the zoo wrote on Twitter.
In the statement, the zoo defended itself saying the fence and ditch surrounding the enclosure were up to international standards.
It also points out that the incident is rare and unpredictable. It also references two other recent events that occurred worldwide: the death of a toddler after an alligator pulled him underwater in Disney World in Orlando and the death of a gorilla after a child fell into its enclosure in Cincinnati.
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Video from directly after the incident shows a group of people huddled around the girl, trying to comfort her before she was taken to hospital.
It also shows what appears to be the rock that hit her, which is roughly the size of a cantaloupe.
The Morocco World News reports that the zoo has opened an investigation into the incident, also noting that this is the first tragedy in the zoo’s four-year history.
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