A Chinese tourist has died in Kenya after being attacked by a hippo on the shores of Lake Naivasha, the East African nation’s wildlife service said on Sunday.
The man, who had been taking photographs, was pronounced dead on arrival at the Naivasha District Hospital, while another tourist survived the attack on Saturday evening, according to the Kenya Wildlife Service. “We are tracking the hippo,” it said on Twitter.
The agency named the dead man as Chang Ming Chuang, 66, and the survivor as Wu Peng Te, 62.
The Chinese embassy did not immediately respond to a call for comment.
On Sunday, Kenyan newspaper The Star quoted the head of a boat owners’ association in Navaisha as saying that higher than normal water levels were causing hippos to wander from the lake on to nearby farms and hotel properties searching for pasture. Naivasha is a city on the lake 90 km northwest of the capital, Nairobi.
After a severe drought last year, Kenya had several months of heavy rains earlier this year that caused serious flooding, including around Lake Naivasha.
Tourism is one of the country’s main sources of foreign exchange and nearly 1.5 million tourists visited Kenya last year, according to the tourism ministry.
