40 crocodiles kill 72-year-old reptile farmer in Cambodia

A 72-year-old man was mauled to death by 40 angry crocodiles after he was let out of a cage at his family-owned reptile farm in Siem Reap, a resort town in northwestern Cambodia.

The man was trying to remove the crocodile from where it had laid its eggs when he grabbed the stick it was using as a calf and dragged it inside the wall.

As he fell, a large group of crocodiles appeared and began to tear his body apart, leaving a pool of blood on a concrete wall at a farm in Siem Reap.

Siem Reap Commune Police Chief May Severy said AFP: “While he was chasing a crocodile out of the egg-laying cage, the crocodile attacked him with a stick, which sent him crashing into the wall.”

“Then other crocodiles attacked him, until he died,” he said, adding that the remains of the man’s body had bite marks.

He said that one of the man’s arms was bitten and swallowed by crocodiles.

In 2018, a two-year-old girl was killed and eaten by crocodiles while she was roaming her family’s reptile farm in the same village, the police chief said.

There are many crocodile farms around Siem Reap, the gateway city to the famous ruins of Angkor Wat.

Reptiles are kept for trade for their eggs, skins and meat, as well as their young.