Attackers are targeting horses and ponies in pastures across France armed with knives in what may be ritual mutilations. Police are baffled by the macabre attacks, which include slashings. Most often, an ear – usually the right one – has been cut off, recalling the matador’s trophy in a bullring. Up to 30 attacks have been reported in France, the agriculture minister said on Friday. One attack was registered in February, according to the news magazine Le Point. With each attack, the mystery only seems to grow. “We are excluding nothing,” the agriculture minister Julien Denormandie said on France-Info. After the first solid sighting of an attacker, gendarmes in Auxerre, in Burgundy, released a composite sketch based on a description by a man who wrangled with two attackers at his animal refuge in a village in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comte region. “I used to have confidence putting my horses out to pasture. Today, I have fear in my gut,” Nicolas Demajean, who runs the refuge Ranch of Hope, told regional TV station France 3 on Thursday. Alerted by his squealing pigs, Demajean faced down two attackers last Monday. He was injured in the arm in a struggle with one intruder wielding a pruning knife as the other slashed the sides of two ponies, now recovering but “traumatised,” he said. The men fled in a vehicle. The following day, a young pony was targeted in the Saone-et-Loire. In another case, some of a horse’s organs were removed. A donkey who reportedly participated in past Christmas markets in Paris was killed in a gruesome attack in June. In France, theories abound as to whether the mutilations are a morbid rite of an unknown cult, a chilling “challenge” relayed by social media or copycat acts. Speculation is widespread as to how barbaric acts, some surgical, could be perpetrated without solid knowledge of equine anatomy or on a horse in a pasture presumably able to flee. “A fearful horse in a pasture won’t get caught. The horse who feels confident with people ... he’ll come, find it normal that you put a harness on it or a rope around its neck,” said veterinarian Aude Giraudet, chief of the equine division at the prestigious National Veterinary School of Alfort, outside Paris. “I’m not sure you need great knowledge of horses,” Giraudet said. “If I were in Normandy, I think I would be very very worried about this epidemic,” she said. Pauline Sarrazin, the owner of one victim, Lady, created a private Facebook group Justice for our Horses after the savage 6 June killing of her horse near Dieppe, on the Atlantic coast. Aimed at sharing stories and advice, the group now has nearly 17,000 members. France’s horse world is increasingly gripped by fear. The president of the French Federation of Equitation offered on Friday to help police investigating the scattered cases. Serge Lecomte said earlier the federation would be a civil party in each case. “We’re all afraid,” said Veronique Dupin, an official of a riding club in the Yvelines region west of Paris, asking that the exact location of the stable not be identified out of caution. Her club installed cameras last year because of intruders, and someone sleeps there nightly. “Despite that, we’re not at ease,” she said, stressing how vulnerable horses can be. “They may be big, but they’re lambs.”