Two of the poachers - AshitoMushahari and MdNur Islam, who entered the park to kill rhino, were arrested. One .303 rifle along with a silencer and five live ammunition were seized from their possession.

Kaziranga divisional forest officer Suvashish Das said that Mushahari hailed from Dimapur in Nagaland.

"They (poachers) were about to kill a rhino at Bagori forest range of the park. They came well prepared for poaching. But their attempt was foiled by a joint operation under assistant conservator of forest Ramen Das and police," Das said.

On Monday a rhino which strayed out from the Kaziranga, about 250 km from here, was killed by the poachers and it's horn taken away, taking the death toll of one-horned pachyderms at the World Heritage site to eight this year so far.

Also on April 13, a rhino was poached inside Kaziranga hours after Duke and Duchess of Cambridge Prince William and Princess Catherine visited the park on jeep safari on the same day.

In another development on Wednesday, a staff of Kaziranga has been taken for interrogation by police in connection with poaching last year.

Already three staff of the park have been arrested on Monday following confession of a poacher that two home guards and a grass-cutter deployed in Kaziranga'sBurapahar range were involved in burying a rhino carcass after the animal was poached last year.

Kaziranga located on the southern bank of the Brahmaputra have 2000-odd rhinos, making it the highest population of one-horned rhinoceros in a single habitat.

With the soaring demand for rhino horn in the international grey market for wildlife part, Kaziranga has been subjected to increasing poaching pressure along with other rhino habitats across the world.

The horns are often smuggled through porous international border Northeast states share with Myanmar for markets in China and Vietnam where the body part is used in traditional medicines.