'Chips saved my life!' Moment elephant SMASHES terrified Aussie tourists' car window in search of food before quick-thinking dad throws fries to distract it and enable their escape

This is the shocking moment a huge elephant charged at an Australian family's van and smashed through their window in search of food during their holiday in Sri Lanka.

Video shows the female elephant called Nitra emerging from the trees in Yala National Park in southeast Sri Lanka and making a bee-line for the van Kasun Basnayake and his family had hired.

The driver desperately tries to reverse the car away from Nitra but she uses her tusk to smash through the van window before using her trunk to search the inside of the vehicle for food. 

But a quick-thinking Kasun threw his son's chips out of the window to distract the elephant. And sure enough, the hungry elephant quickly steps away from the vehicle to feast on the food. 

The driver quickly puts the car in first gear and speeds away from the elephant - but not before it smashes its head into the side of the van. 

Kasun, from Perth, Western Australia, told the BBC: 'It started sniffing around our feet for food and the driver told us to give it anything we had so I fed it my son's leftover sandwich.

'He told me to throw the rest out the window so I did and the driver then managed to speed off.

'Those sandwiches and chips probably saved our lives.'

No one was injured in the incident that occurred on Monday on the Culp Temple Road inside the Yala National Park. 

The family had been travelling towards the Situlpauwa temple, which is popular with tourists, when they were ambushed by the elephant.

The Culp Temple road is reportedly a key spot that elephants use to ambush wide-eyed tourists and steal their food.

The Yala National Park has a protected area of nearly 130,000 hectares of land consisting of forests, grasslands and lagoons. 

The park is home to animals such as elephants, leopards, sloths, jackals and crocodiles.