NAIROBI, March 24, 2008 (AFP) - Villagers in central Kenya killed nine elephants that strayed into their farmlands over the past year, a wildlife official said on Monday.

The elephants were killed as they strayed from Aberdare National Park, the park's senior warden Catherine Wambani told state-run Kenya News Agency.

She said that farmers had placed pumpkins laced with poison along the elephant path, mainly in the Nyahururu area.

Poaching slashed Kenya's elephant population from nearly 50,000 in 1965 to about 10,600 in the early 1990s, but conservation efforts and anti-poaching measures have seen numbers inch back up to 30,000.