© Michel Euler/AP
Attackers are targeting horses and ponies in pastures across France armed with knives
in what may be ritual mutilations.
Police are baffled by the macabre attacks, which include slashings. Most often, an ear - usually the right one - has been cut off, recalling the matador's trophy in a bullring.
Up to 30 attacks have been reported in France, the agriculture minister said on Friday. One attack was registered in February, according to the news magazine
Le Point.
With each attack, the mystery only seems to grow."We are excluding nothing," the agriculture minister Julien Denormandie said on France-Info.
After the
first solid sighting of an attacker, gendarmes in Auxerre, in Burgundy, released a composite sketch based on a description by a man who wrangled with two attackers at his animal refuge in a village in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comte region.
"I used to have confidence putting my horses out to pasture. Today, I have fear in my gut," Nicolas Demajean, who runs the refuge Ranch of Hope, told regional TV station France 3 on Thursday.
Alerted by his squealing pigs,
Demajean faced down two attackers last Monday. He was injured in the arm in a struggle with one intruder wielding a pruning knife as the other slashed the sides of two ponies, now recovering but "traumatised," he said. The men fled in a vehicle.
The following day, a young pony was targeted in the Saone-et-Loire. In another case, some of a horse's organs were removed.
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