In one of the most horrifying cases of poaching in the central African country, authorities found around 200 massacred elephants whose tusks had been cut off. The carcasses were found in a large salt marsh, located 800 kms north of the capital, Brazzaville. The marsh is a popular watering hole for animal herds despite decades of heavy poaching in the region.

The poachers had used rifles to kill the elephants, some of them either pregnant females or infants, and then sheared off their ivory tusks, leaving behind tonnes of rotting meat. "Never in all my years as a forester have I seen such a massacre,' said Oko Ruffin Antoine of the ministry of water and forests. The government had recently placed the marsh under protection of the National Park of Odzala, Congo's largest game park, he said.