Escaped Tiger in Tbilisi Killed Man Before Being Caught and Put Down

A tiger that escaped from the Tbilisi Zoo during flooding in the Georgian capital killed a man before being captured and killed, news agencies reported on Wednesday.

          

       Residents in Tbilisi were warned on Sunday to keep off the streets, because of fears that they were at risk of being mauled by frightened lions, tigers, bears and other beasts that were roaming the city after torrential rains allowed the animals to leave their enclosures at the zoo.

Georgian authorities have since been scrambling to contain the animals. Hundreds drowned or were killed, including six wolves found on the grounds of a children’s hospital, a bear and a hyena. An African penguin reportedly managed to survive by swimming more than 35 miles to the border with Azerbaijan before it was captured on Wednesday.

The zoo had said on Tuesday that all of the missing lions and tigers had been found dead, with one jaguar unaccounted for. Then came news reports that the tiger, which had been hiding in a warehouse, had killed a man near the city’s central square.

The Interior Ministry initially said the victim had been killed by a lion, Agence France-Presse reported, and mobilized special forces to find the animal.

Nino Giorgobiani, a spokesman for the ministry, later corrected that assessment and identified the animal as a tiger, the agency said. “It has been liquidated,” she was quoted as saying.

Witnesses to the mauling told the local news media that they saw a white tiger attack a man, the agency said. “It was a white tiger, a big one,” a witness told the Imedi channel, according to the agency. “It attacked a man; it seized him by the throat.”

At least 17 people have been killed in the flooding, according to news agencies, including three zookeepers.

The surreal scenes in Tbilisi, including of residents herding a hippopotamus along a muddy street and of animal corpses scattered amid the debris of damaged vehicles and buildings, have captured global attention as Georgia struggles to come to terms with destruction wrought by the flooding.

Some residents have expressed anger at the killing of animals, an action that the authorities said was necessary to protect lives.