Nightmare as ellies run amok, causing death and mayhem

As dawn breaks over Malawi, Rodwell Chalilima gazes at his flattened maize field, the rising sun casting long shadows over the chaos left behind.

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Kasungu - As dawn breaks over Malawi, Rodwell Chalilima gazes at his flattened maize field, the rising sun casting long shadows over the chaos left behind.

Torn stalks lie broken like matchsticks. Elephant footprints, as wide as dinner plates, pock the soil.

"They came in the night again," said Chalilima, a 45-year-old father of six, his voice barely above a whisper and thick with grief and anger.

"We counted nearly 200 elephants. We just watched from our homes. We can't stop them. We're powerless," he said at Chisinga village outside the Kasungu National Park.

The trouble started around three years ago when 263 elephants were transferred to the park on the border with Zambia from an overpopulated Malawi reserve in a multimillion-rand collaboration between the government and wildlife NGOs.