About 40 crocodiles killed a Cambodian man on Friday after he fell into their enclosure at his family’s reptile farm, police said.
Luan Nam, 72, was trying to pull a crocodile out of a cage where it had been laying eggs when it grabbed the stick it was using as a prod and pulled it inside.
The main group of reptiles then attacked him, tearing his body to pieces and leaving the concrete enclosure of the Siem Reap farmhouse awash in blood.
“While chasing a crocodile out of a nesting cage, the crocodile attacked the stick, causing it to fall into the enclosure,” Siem commune police chief Mey Savry told AFP. Reap.
“Then other crocodiles jumped up, attacking him until he was dead,” he said, adding that the remains of Luan Nam’s body were covered with bite marks.
One of the man’s arms was bitten off and swallowed by the crocodiles, he said.
Luan Nam was the president of the local crocodile breeders’ association, but his family can now sell his stock, after years of urging him to stop breeding the reptiles, the head of the council told AFP. May Sameth commune.
Local media reported that the victim was from Po Banteay Chey village.
A two-year-old girl was killed and eaten by crocodiles in 2019 while wandering around her family’s reptile farm in the same village, the police chief said.
There are a number of crocodile farms around Siem Reap, the gateway town to the famous Angkor Wat ruins.
Reptiles are bred for their eggs, skins and meat as well as for trade in their young.
The incident marks at least the second person killed by a crocodile this month. At the beginning of May, the the remains of a missing 65-year-old fisherman in Australia were found inside two crocodiles.
Last year, two American tourists were wounded by a crocodile at a resort in Mexico when one went swimming in the ocean at night and the other went into the water to help him.
