and nine suspects wounded in gunfights.

Still, rhino carcasses with mutilated faces are becoming a common sight in African wildlife parks. The hacked-off horns are destined to be smuggled to China and Vietnam, where traditional medicine practitioners grind them up for sale as alleged cures for everything from fevers to arthritis and cancer.

The horns have become so valuable that thieves this year started stealing rhino exhibits in European museums. The going rate is up to $44,000 a pound (60,000 pounds a kilogram) according to the London Metropolitan Police department.

Even in the United States, police in Denver have arrested members of an Irish syndicate trying to smuggle rhino horn.

"Aside from Central and South America, every region of the world appears to be affected by criminals who are fraudulently acquiring rhinoceroshorns," warned John M. Sellar, enforcement chief of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.

"Government officials are being corrupted. Money-laundering is taking place," he said.

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Kruger sprawls across 2 million hectares — about the size of Massachusetts — and around two-thirds of poachers come on foot across the border from Mozambique. Lt. Col. Bongie Vilakazi says the poachers have reacted to the South African army presence by traveling in much larger gangs of up to seven people.

"They come across around sunset, aim to shoot the rhino before dark and then spend the night in the bush before heading home with the horn," Vilakazi said.

Soldiers do not patrol at night though because of the dangerous nocturnal predators: Once, a pride of lions charged at troops in the back of