Updated

A top official of the World Wide Fund for Nature says that two gangs of heavily armed poachers from Sudan are heading for northern Cameroon to slaughter elephants.

WWF Cameroon conservation director Hason Njiforti said Tuesday that despite armed guards Cameroon's dwindling elephant population is being decimated by international poaching rings.

Early this year, poachers traveled more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) on horseback from Sudan, crossing through the Central African Republic to reach northern Cameroon's Bouba Ndjida National Park where they killed more than 300 elephants in two months. The killings wiped out about 80 percent of the park's elephant population.

Njiforte warned that intelligence surveillance shows that two large groups of the same armed poachers are again on their way to Cameroon, travelling through the Central African Republic.