KATHMANDU (AFP) - Police and wildlife rangers have launched a hunt for a tiger which mauled two people to death on Thursday in Nepal, officials said.

The tiger first killed a 75-year-old man when it dragged him out of a hut on the fringes of the Chitwan National Park in central Nepal, police said.

"The old man was living with his daughter-in-law but she said she didn't know about the attack. In the morning people saw blood and traced it to the forest, where they found the body," Superintendent Deepak Kumar Thapa told AFP.

Supt Thapa said a 31-year-old man then fell victim to the same tiger when he joined a group of villagers trying to hunt it down.

Dozens of policemen and forestry officials have now been sent to the area with a cage to capture the tiger alive.

According to the WWF conservation group, there are around 150 wild tigers in Nepal, mostly in the country's protected areas in the southern plains.