“A witness saw how he left his clothes on the river, and noticed that a crocodile was suspected in the water,” said the local police commissioner at the Antara news agency. An hour later the crocodile appeared again, with the victim between the jaws.
The animal dragged the body more than 200 meters, writes the Kompas newspaper. Village dwellers threw stones to unload the crocodile. “That finally succeeded, but the man had already died,” the police said. The order services take the opportunity to ask the population to be extremely careful near the river.
Figures from the Crocattack website show that between 2015 and 2024 1,167 people were attacked by crocodiles in Indonesia, much more than in any other country in the world. 556 of those attacks were deadly.
Different crocodile species can be found in Indonesia, but the sea crocodile is involved in most attacks. That species is the largest and most dangerous crocodile-like and occurs throughout Southeast Asia and Australia.