New Delhi (AFP) - A tiger dubbed "the man-eater of Champaran" was killed by Indian police after killing at least nine people during a massive operation involving 200 people, some of whom were traveling on elephants, officials said Sunday. .

The animal sowed terror among the population in the vicinity of the Valmiki Tiger Reserve in Champaran, eastern India, and killed at least six people for a month, including a woman and her eight-year-old son on Saturday.

Even before the two recent deaths, the authorities had described the tiger - which is believed to be a male of three or four years old - as "man-eating", meaning that it could be exterminated.

Previous attempts to neutralize the animal danger have failed.

"Two teams entered the forest on the back of two elephants on Saturday afternoon, and a third waited at the point where we thought the leopard would come out, and we shot (...) to kill it there," local police chief Kiran Kumar told AFP.

Kumar said that while the villagers were striking tin containers, it took the team of eight snipers and about 200 members of the forest department nearly six hours to complete the operation.

Environmental activists attribute these cases to the rapid expansion of human settlements around forests and major wildlife routes, such as the habitats of elephants and tigers, which is a source of increasing clashes between humans and animals in some parts of India.

About 225 people were killed in tiger attacks between 2014 and 2019 in India, according to government data.

These statistics revealed that more than 200 tigers were killed by illegal poachers or by electrocution between 2012 and 2018.

India is home to about 70% of the world's tigers, with 2,967 tigers in the country in 2018.