Two wild Asian elephants were brought to safety on Wednesday after four days of ordeal on a beach in Bangladesh.

Coming from Burma, the two animals got lost due to a blocked migration route and found themselves stranded there without food.

The male and female are currently being guided towards the wooded hills of Teknaf, according to the Bangladeshi authorities.

The couple arrived there this Saturday by crossing the Naf River, the natural border between Bangladesh and Burma.

Hundreds of frightened inhabitants then chased them towards the beach, devoid of any greenery.

VIDEO: Two elephants are led to safety after crossing from Myanmar to Bangladesh, getting stranded on a beach and nearly dying at sea.

Dwindling forests straddling southern Bangladesh and western Myanmar are some of the last remaining habitats of endangered Asian elephants pic.twitter.com/Ha02zVahFD

- AFP News Agency (@AFP) July 1, 2021

Hunted by locals

The pachyderms spent four days on the coast wandering without feeding.

Made nervous by thousands of people who came to observe them on the beach, the two elephants ended up taking refuge in the shallow waters of an inlet in the Bay of Bengal.

They exhausted themselves there for hours until fishermen aboard boats managed to bring them back to shore.

Two elephants rescued after 4 days of ordeal on a #Bangladesh beach ➡️ https://t.co/D1mwyy7BWX pic.twitter.com/5TBrfN9YtK

- The Parisian (@le_Parisien) June 30, 2021

"The fishermen saved them from certain death," said the head of the forestry department.

“They were hungry.

[…] We were deeply concerned for their health.

According to him, the elephant pair were likely separated from their herd during the annual migration.

"The straying of elephants is a recurring phenomenon," he explains.

The migration of elephants disturbed by humans

Wild Asian elephants roam the hills of southern Bangladesh and western Burma, whose forests are among their last havens.

But they can no longer take a blocked migration route, where vast swathes of forest have been destroyed by the passage of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees who have fled Burma since 2017.

“This is the fourth time since last year that elephants have made unusual attempts to reach their Bangladeshi habitat via the Naf River,” says Raquibul Amin, local official of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN ).

According to him, a "cross-border dialogue" between the two countries would be necessary to monitor the animals and promote their migration.

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