Horses killed in France, Fear and mystery as dozens of horses

 Horses killed in France,  Fear and mystery as dozens of horses.

A series of attacks on horse and ponies across France have left police baffled and struck fear into the country’s equestrian community.

Agriculture minister Julien Denormandie said there had been up to 30 attacks, from the mountainous Jura region in the east to the Atlantic coast, in what are thought to have been ritual mutilations.

Many have taken place this summer although one attack was registered in February, according to the news magazine Le Point. Most often, an ear – usually the right one – has been cut off, recalling matadors taking trophies in a bullring.

“We are excluding nothing,” Mr Denormandie told France-Info on Friday, before heading to a riding club in the Saone-et-Loire region, in east central France, where a horse was attacked a day earlier.

“Ears are cut off, eyes removed, an animal is emptied of its blood,” he said, spelling out the injuries suffered by the animals.

“All means are in motion to end this terror,” the minister tweeted.

After the first solid sighting of an attacker, officers in Auxerre, in Burgundy, released a composite sketch this week based on a description by a man who confronted two attackers at his animal refuge in a village in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comte region.

Nicolas Demajean, who runs the Ranch of Hope refuge, told regional TV station France 3: “I used to have confidence putting my horses out to pasture. Today, I have fear in my gut.”

Alerted by his squealing pigs, Mr Damajean faced down two attackers last Monday.

He himself was injured in the arm in a struggle with one intruder who wielded a pruning knife, as the other slashed the sides of two ponies, who are now recovering, but “traumatised”, he said.

The men fled in a vehicle.

The following day, an attacker or attackers attacked a young pony in the Saone-et-Loire. In another case, some of a horse’s organs were removed.

A donkey who had reportedly participated in the Christmas market in Paris was killed in a gruesome attack in June.