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 free a crocodile from a cage where it had laid eggs when it grabbed the stick he was using as a goad and pulled it inside.
The main group of reptiles then turned on him, tearing his body apart and leaving the concrete enclosure at the farm in Siem Reap covered in blood.
“While he was chasing a crocodile out of an egg cage, the crocodile attacked the stick and fell into the enclosure,” Siem Reap Municipality Police Chief Mey Savry told AFP.
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“Then other crocodiles pounced on him and attacked 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 president of the local crocodile breeders’ association, but his family is now allowed to sell his stock after years of urging him to stop breeding the reptiles, community leader May Sameth told AFP.
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 when she entered her family’s reptile farm in the same village, the police chief said.
There are a number of crocodile farms dotted around Siem Reap, the gateway town to the famous ruins of Angkor Wat.
The reptiles are kept for their eggs, skins and meat, and to trade their young.
The incident marks at least the second human being killed by a crocodile this month. In early May, the remains of a missing 65-year-old fisherman were found inside two crocodiles in Australia.
Last year, two American tourists were injured by a crocodile at a resort in Mexico when one went for a night swim in the sea and the other went into the water to help him.
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