After chasing a car for nearly 20 kilometers, police of the central province of Nghe An seized three frozen tiger bodies on May 28.

While patrolling on National Highway 1A at 2.30pm of May 28, a traffic police team of Nghe An province noticed a suspected car. They signaled for the driver to stop but he ignored the request and ran away.

Three police officers chased after the car on police motorcycles. After pursuing this car for nearly 20 kilometers, the police officers had to fire some bullets to demand the driver to stop.

When the car just stopped, a man closed the door and ran away into the nearby pine woods. The driver was arrested, with three dead tigers in his car.

The three frozen tiger carcasses weighed 300 kilograms in total inside the vehicle along with weapons and some fake car license plates.

The driver is Nguyen Dinh Hai, 23, from Ha Tinh Province. Hai said that he was hired by a man from his hometown to transport a package of wild boars to Quynh Luu District in Nghe An Province. He said he did not know the animals were tigers and this batch of goods was sold to a trader from Hanoi.

The police have handed over the dead tigers to the local forestation protection agency.

As few as 30 wild tigers survive in Vietnam, according to 2011 statistics released by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

Statistics from the Worldwide Fund for Nature said that 97 percent of the world's big cats had been lost in just over a century, and only 3,200 remain in the wild.

Tigers are facing risks of extinction as they are hunted down worldwide for their fur, bones and other parts for traditional Chinese medicine.

Source: VNN