The chimpanzee grabbed the baby from its mother and dragged it into the forest.

According to Reuters, residents living near a chimpanzee research center in Guinea launched an attack on the facility on Friday after a local woman claimed one of the animals had killed her infant, as reported by the center's managers.

A furious crowd stormed the center, destroying and setting fire to equipment, including drones, computers, and over 200 documents, according to the center’s management.

Eyewitness accounts indicated that the crowd was reacting to the discovery of a mutilated infant’s body, found 3 km (1.9 miles) away from the Nimba Mountains Nature Reserve, which is recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The child’s mother, Seny Zogba, told Reuters she was working in a cassava field when a chimpanzee approached her from behind, bit her, and dragged her baby into the forest.

Local ecologist Alidjiou Sylla explained that a shrinking food supply within the reserve is pushing chimpanzees to leave the protected area more frequently, increasing the likelihood of encounters and attacks.

The research center reported that there have been six recorded chimpanzee attacks on humans within the reserve since the beginning of the year.

Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone in West Africa are home to the largest population of the critically endangered western chimpanzee. The International Union for Conservation of Nature estimates that their population declined by 80% between 1990 and 2014.

In Guinea's Bossou forest, which is part of the Nimba Mountains Nature Reserve, only seven chimpanzees remain. This area is close to subsistence farming communities in the Nzerekore Region.

Chimpanzees in Guinea are traditionally respected and often receive food offerings, which sometimes encourages them to venture out of protected areas into human settlements, leading to occasional attacks.

The Nimba Mountains also contain one of Guinea’s largest iron ore reserves, raising environmental concerns about the potential impact of mining activities on the region’s chimpanzee population.