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Poachers in Zimbabwe have killed more than 300 elephants and countless other safari animals by cyanide poisoning.

The full extent of the carnage in Hwange, the country’s largest national park, has been revealed by legitimate hunters who discovered what conservationists said was the worst single massacre in southern Africa for 25 years.

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Parts of the national park, which is visited by thousands of tourists each year, can be seen from the air to be littered with the corpses of elephants, often with their calves dead beside them, as well as those of other animals.

There is deep concern that the use of cyanide represents a new and devastating technique in the rapidly growing poaching trade.

There were too many to have died of thirst or hunger

Zimbabwean authorities said that 90 animals have been killed this way. But the hunters who captured these photographs said they counted the corpses of more than 300.

Poachers killed the elephants over the past three months by planting buckets of water laced with cyanide in the sand. Animals are drawn to them during the dry season in the already arid and remote south-eastern section of the 5,660-square mile park.