Horror moment for WA family as they encounter hungry elephant

An Australian family holidaying in Sri Lanka has had a lucky escape after an elephant looking for food ransacked their van.

Surprising home footage has emerged showing the moment a Perth family are ambushed by a female elephant in search of food.

In the footage, the Basnayake family, who are holidaying in Sri Lanka, are travelling in a white van along the Culp Temple Rd inside the Yala National Park.

They were on their way to the temple in the national park when the animal attacked their vehicle.

The elephant, called Nitra, emerges from the trees along the side of the road and heads directly for the van.

The elephant’s trunk forces its way through the van’s driver’s window. Picture: Daily Mail

In a split second, Nitra smashes the driver’s window with her tusks and plunges her trunk through the window, rummaging for food.

In the footage, father-of-two Kasun Basnayake says “it’s okay, it’s okay” to calm his children as the giant elephant sniffs for food.

The Basnayake family were on holiday in Sri Lanka when a hungry elephant attacked their van in search of food. Picture: Channel 9

The van driver continues to try to put the vehicle in reverse but stalls.

A frightened “Can we get out, I’m scared?” is then heard from one of Mr Basnayake sons.

“It started sniffing around our feet for food and the driver told us to give it anything we had, so I fed it my son’s leftover sandwich,” Mr Basnayake told the BBC.

Mr Basnayake throws his son’s leftover lunch, hot chips, out the window to distract the elephant. Picture: Daily Mail

Damage from inside the van where elephant’s tusk pierced through. Picture: Daily Mail

It does the trick, as the elephant is distracted by the food but not before it smashes its tusk into the side of the van for a second time.

“Those sandwiches and chips probably saved our lives,” Mr Basnayake said.

The van showing the damage the elephant tusks made. No one was injured in the incident.

The reason these things happen is people have been feeding wild animals on the road, so rather then trying to find food on their own, they can get an easy meal by attacking a van,” he told Nine.

The Yala National Park has a protected area of nearly 130,000 hectares of land consisting of forests, grasslands and lagoons. Culp Temple Rd is reportedly a key spot that elephants use to ambush tourists to steal food.