Two poachers gunned down in Kaziranga National Park

Two poachers were killed in an encounter with forest guards and the Special Task Force (STF) in the Kohora area of the Kaziranga National Park on Friday.

The Kaziranga National Park is the world's biggest reserve for the endangered great one-horned rhinoceros. The thick-skinned, one-horned Indian rhinoceros is one of the five surviving rhino species in the world.

Forest guards had received prior information that a group of poachers would try to enter the national park through National Highway-37.

They noticed a group of five men entering the park in the wee hours of Friday soon after which the exchange of gunfire began.

Assistant Conservator of Forests (ACF), Kaziranga National Park, Pradipta Baruah, said all the nearby camps in the park had been asked to maintain extra vigil.

Pradipta Baruah, Assistant Conservator of Forests, Bagori Range, Kaziranga National Park,, said, "We saw one group of five persons entering the national park to kill rhinos. We had an exchange of fire with them and in the due process we recovered two unknown dead bodies and on search we found two rifles, one 303 and one .315 with silencer and one axe and some food material in the bags."

Baruah added a search operation was on to nab the remaining three poachers.

So far, this year 20 poachers have been gunned down by the security forces and 15 rhinos have been killed by poachers in Kaziranga National Park.