A donkey found to have been shot multiple times by a hunter is in a “critical condition” after being taken in for treatment by the Tashkent nature park in the Kyrenia district village of Vouno, its director Kemal Basat said.

He said that once the nature park was made aware of the situation, “teams were mobilised to help the donkey hold on to life” and added that treating the donkey would be “very costly and difficult”.

He was also scathing in his assessment of those who shot the donkey, describing them as “nature terrorists”, and saying that “the biggest enemy of hunting is its inability to cleanse itself of the bad apples”.

“These human-looking murderers are wandering around nature with hunting rifles with the permission given by the state. The fact that a psychopathic murderer has a hunting licence paves the way for such incidents,” he added.

He also said the hunting community’s “biggest problem” is its “inability to clean the rotten apples among them”.

“Such incidents also put real hunters who are law-abiding citizens under suspicion,” he said.

X-ray of the donkey showing the shotgun pellets