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An eight-year-old boy tragically died after being swallowed by a crocodile while swimming in a river with his little brother.
The boy’s father desperately chased after the animal and reportedly hit it with his bare hands, but the predator wasn’t caught until the next day, a search and rescue official said.
The boy was attacked in Indonesia’s East Kalimantan province and swam in a river known to be a crocodile habitat.
The 20-foot crocodile is understood to have been found by locals and opened on March 4, the Australian Associated Press reports.
The family cried as disturbing footage showed the boy’s body being pulled out of the crocodile’s belly, reports Mirror.co.uk.
The search and rescue official said the family “often went to the river to bathe and get water for cooking.”
In 2018, Indonesian villagers armed with knives, hammers and clubs killed 292 crocodiles in revenge for the death of a man killed by a crocodile on a breeding farm, Reuters reported.
Photographs released by the Antara news agency showed the bloody carcasses of crocodiles piled up in a large pile in the Sorong district of Indonesia’s eastern West Papua province.
The head of the Indonesian Natural Resources Conservation Agency in West Papua said the 48-year-old victim had entered the crocodile farm and was probably gathering grass to feed the animals when he was attacked.
“An employee heard someone yelling for help, he quickly went there and saw a crocodile attacking someone,” Basar Manullang said in a statement.
After the man’s burial, villagers entered the farm and killed all the crocodiles, Manullang said.
Manullang said the farm received a license to raise protected New Guinea and saltwater crocodiles in 2013 for their conservation and also to harvest some of the animals.
But one of the conditions was that the reptiles did not disturb the community, he said.
“To prevent this from happening again, agricultural license holders must protect the surrounding areas,” explained Manullang.
He said his agency was coordinating with the police in their investigation.
“Crocodiles are God’s creatures who also need protection,” Manullang added.
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