Paramilitary police have been sent to protect terrified villagers in southern Sierra Leone after wild bush cows attacked their homes and gored a farmer to death, police said on Tuesday.
"We were at our police post when about 10 villagers reported they had been terrorised by a number of bush cows," Fuk Daboh, a local police chief in the Bo district of the West African country, told Reuters.
"We wasted no time and travelled to the area where we met hundreds of the villagers fleeing to safety … We found the corpse of a farmer," he said.
Bush cows, characterised by their short horns and large ears, are also known as dwarf forest buffalo. Although smaller than the savannah buffalo found in eastern and southern Africa, they are considered extremely ferocious and destructive.