7-year-old girl dies after elephant at zoo throws a rock at her

Photo: Getty Images An elephant raises its trunk in this 2008 file photo of the Rabat Zoo.

A 7-year-old girl died on Tuesday, following injuries she sustained from a rock thrown by an elephant at the Rabat Zoo in Morocco.

The girl was with her family in a visitors' area when a female elephant picked up a rock "nearly the size of half a brick" with her trunk, and threw it, hitting the girl in the back of the head, the Guardian reported.

The girl died hours after the incident at a hospital.

The female elephant was one of three kept in an open-air enclosure, which the Rabat Zoo said meets international safety standards. The elephants are separated from visitors by a large ditch, along with a wooden fence, CNN reported. The zoo has not had any previous record of injuries or deaths caused by animals.

Cell phone footage of the incident has surfaced, showing the moments after the girl was struck. The video shows visitors helping the girl as she is bleeding from the head, as well as the elephant enclosure and the thrown rock.

A commenter on the video criticized the lack of an emergency station at the zoo, while others mentioned the "delayed arrival" of paramedics, according to Morocco World News.

The zoo issued a statement on the death and offered its condolences to the family, saying, "this kind of accident is rare, unforeseeable and unusual."

The statement went on to say that similar accidents have happened internationally, referencing the death of a 2-year-old who was attacked and killed by an alligator at a Disney World resort, and the 3-year-old who fell into a gorilla enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo.