Festival featuring animal sacrifice begins

BARIYAPUR, Nepal, Nov. 24 (UPI) -- Hindus went to Bariyapur, Nepal, to attend a festival featuring what is believed to be the world's largest animal sacrifice, attending priests said.

During the Gadhimai festival, which happens once every five years, about a quarter-million animals are expected to be sacrificed to Gadhimai, a goddess of power, the BBC reported Tuesday.

Sacrifice is considered a way of thanking a deity for good luck, or asking for fortune and prosperity, priests said.

"The goddess needs blood," Chandan Dev Chaudhury, a priest at the Gadhimai temple in the center of the festival grounds, told the British broadcaster. "If anyone has a problem, then I will cut the throat of an animal in the temple and that person's problem will be solved."

Organizers estimated more than half-million people already were on-site Tuesday.

A group of animal rights activists outside the temple cracked coconuts as a symbolic sacrifice, the BBC reported.

The protesters said animal sacrifice was cruel and barbaric and Hindu gods can be appeased by fruit and flower sacrifices.

"We're not saying stop the Gadhimai festival -- everybody's having a nice time," protest organiser Pramada Shah said. "But let's have it in a less gory manner is all we're trying to say."