British tourists were shocked to see crocodiles eating a man as they took a sunset cruise along the Zambezi River between Zimbabwe and Zambia.
According to The Telegraph the group and their guide spotted the crocodiles feeding on something as they moved down the river from their camp on the Zambian side.
When they got closer, they realized it was the bottom half of a human. They reported the sighting to the authorities but when police arrived, there were no remains left.
“All there was to see of him was his trousers,” a local source who did not wish to be named said.
“We have had no information about anyone missing from villages around us, so we don’t think the man was a local.”
The body is believed to be that of a Zambian man who was among a group of 13 suspected poachers ambushed by rangers in Zimbabwe two days earlier.
Trevor Lane of the Bhejane Trust, a Zimbabwean conservation group, said one person was killed outright in the resulting confrontation, and local intelligence suggested only nine made it back over the river.
“We strongly suspect it was a poacher,” Mr Lane told the South African Press Association. “Maybe he was wounded and tried to swim across the river.”
“National Parks Zimbabwe was tipped off by Botswana that poachers from Zambia were on their way,” he told the Telegraph.
“It was a group of about 13 of them, and there was a shoot out. I suspect the man who was eaten by the crocodile was either injured during that shoot out and tried to escape through the water, or he was shot in the water, and was already dead when the crocodile ate him.”
Crocodile attacks are frequent in Zimbabwe and three children are among those who have reportedly fallen victim in the past three months.
A 17-year-old boy herding cattle was taken by a crocodile in the Mutirikwi River in south-eastern Zimbabwe last month while on February 22, a three-year-old girl was snatched as she played with a friend on the banks of the Zambezi in Hwange, northern Zimbabwe.
On New Year’s Day, a 16-year-old girl was attacked in the Runde River, also in southern Zimbabwe.
But locals are also fighting back. The Manica Post reported on Friday that a large crocodile from the Mazonwe River in eastern Zimbabwe was finally killed by state rangers earlier in the week. It had been blamed for the deaths of 10 people since mid-2014.
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