A tiger mauled two people to death on Indonesia's Sumatra island, bringing to six the number of humans in the area killed by the endangered beasts since last month, an official said Monday, dpa reported.
The two people were attacked on Saturday while working in an illegal logging camp in a forest in Jambi province, said the head of the provincial Natural Conservation Office, Didy Wurjanto.
Didy said six people had been killed and three others injured by Sumatran tigers since late January.
"We don't know if it was the same tiger that killed the others," he said, adding that the previous victims were also people from outside the area who were working for illegal logging operations.
A female tiger suspected to have killed the four previous victims was caught earlier this month and is currently being kept at a local zoo, he said.
Didy blamed the destruction of the tigers' habitat by illegal logging and palm oil plantations for the attacks on humans.
"They feel they are being disturbed and attacked so they are taking revenge," he said. "It's happened because people are greedy."
The forest has been "no man's land" since it was abandoned by timber companies after logging rights expired in the area, making it difficult to monitor illegal logging and palm oil plantations, he said.
The conservation group WWF said there are fewer than 400 Sumatran tigers in the wild and they can only be found on Sumatra.
WWF said tigers were once widespread on the Indonesian islands of Bali and Java but those two subspecies became extinct in the 20th century.
Logging and rampant poaching are driving the Sumatran tiger to extinction, it said.
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