Borneo orang utan was shot over 100 times with airgun

JAKARTA (AFP) - An endangered orang utan on Borneo island has survived after being shot more than 100 times with an air rifle, Indonesian officials said on Thursday.

The female ape, whom conservationists have named Aan, has gone blind in one eye and sustained serious wounds across her body after being repeatedly hit with pellets on the Indonesian part of the island.

Conservationists had feared the orang utan, found on an oil palm plantation with 37 pellets lodged in her head and 67 elsewhere in her body, would not survive but officials now believe she has cheated death.

"She is fighting hard. She was badly wounded, but she's starting to eat so we're hopeful," Mr Hartono, head of the local government conservation agency, told AFP.