The five-year-old girl, who was last seen bathing in a lake, was found dead hours after being ‘snatched’ by a crocodile in Bangka Regency, Indonesia, police said
A young girl has been tragically killed in a crocodile attack while bathing in a lake.
Five-year-old Caca disappeared around 9am on Saturday near Bukit Layang Village in Bangka Regency, Indonesia before her body was found nearby around 5am the next day. She was last seen bathing in an abandoned tin-ore mining pond.
The discovery of her body yesterday followed several hours of frantic searching by local rescue teams, the army and the police. I Made Oka Astawa, head of the local search and rescue agency, said: “The victim was snatched by a crocodile.” Her body has now been returned to her family for burial. The crocodile was captured yesterday and brought ashore.
It is only the latest fatal crocodile-related tragedy to take place in Indonesia, where attacks in waterways in rural parts of the country are common. Last month a killer crocodile was seen surfacing with the body of a woman in its mouth after trapping her in a ‘death roll’. Nurhawati Zihura, 46, was washing her feet in the seawater next to her coastal village in North Sumatra, Indonesia, when she was attacked by the 13ft reptile. A few hours later, the crocodile was seen again as it emerged from the water clutching the woman’s body in its jaws.
Indonesia has the highest number of recorded saltwater crocodile attacks in the world, and last year figures showed there were at least 1,000 incidents over the past decade – though many more are believed to have gone unreported. It resulted in more than 450 fatalities, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Many of the attacks take place on Bangka Island, where the young girl lost her life at the weekend. Experts say the high number of incidents is connected to illegal tin mining, which destroys the crocodiles’ natural forested habitats and forces them to search for food in human-inhabited areas. The rise in human fatalities has prompted calls from conservation groups for designated areas to better protect the crocodile population. While crocodiles are already a protected species in Indonesia, local traditions in certain parts of Indonesia often mean that the animals are killed following an attack, rather than handed over to conservation officials.
