About 50 long-tailed macaque were crushed to death under the weight of a huge Prado tree which fell onto the lawn of a school in Chanthaburi’s Muang district early Tuesday morning.
Mr Rangsan Kumtrakul, director of Khao Wongkot School, said it was lucky that the incident occurred during the early hours of Tuesday otherwise many students would have been hurt or killed had the incident occurred during the daytime.
He suspected that the ground where the huge tree stood might have softened after heavy rains in the past few days and three loosened up and collapsed while many monkeys were asleep on the tree.
Altogether 52 monkeys , including several young ones, were found dead on the ground.
Mr Rangsan, however, admitted that he felt saddened with the death of so many monkeys in one occasion because they have been in the school for a long time.
With the help of students and employees, the dead monkeys which included several adults and babies, were taken away for burial.
Several monkeys were found injured from the incident and the school had sought help from provincial officials to take care of the injured macaque.
