Police hunt for two suspects after number of attacks on horses rises to 30

FRENCH police are hunting for two men who attacked a horse yesterday as domestic intelligence warned of an “increasingly sordid” spate of killings.

Some 40 police officers with sniffer dogs and backed up by a helicopter combed fields in the wine-growing Côte d’or region of Burgundy after intruders broke into a pasture and injured a horse in Losne. Road checks were also carried out. “Two men are wanted,” confirmed the local gendarmerie in Beaune. The Dijon prosecutor said: “A horse was injured on its side. A very deep wound, according to the veterinary examination.”

In the Val-d’oise département, outside Paris, two mares were slashed on Saturday, and one had its genitals mutilated and sewn together. Another horse was found dead after an apparent attack in the Cantal, central France, the same day. France has been appalled at the number of killings and mutilations of horses in recent months, and paranoia has set in among owners, whom police have urged to remain vigilant but not to take on any assailants.

According to a leaked note by SCRT, the domestic intelligence agency, the “unprecedented” number of deaths had surpassed 30. Two thirds of the attacks involved hacking off an ear.

The note, published yesterday in Le Parisien newspaper, pointed out that almost all of the macabre attacks had taken place in the northern half of France between Charente-maritime and L’ain départements.

Two of the most recent deaths involved poisoning, it said.

While intelligence agents were unable to pinpoint precise motives, they suggested that they could be anything from “satanic rituals” to “dares between several individuals” or even “sexual and morbid frustration”. Another factor could be “revenge in the horse world,” it suggested, pointing out that the assailants’ “way of operating suggests detailed knowledge of horses”. They also know “how to use a large knife” and appear to be “individuals of a certain physical strength”.

It warned that “recent discoveries are increasingly sordid” and that those behind it had no compunction about “violating taboos”.