In a heartbreaking event in eastern Indonesia, a 54-year-old woman lost her life after being attacked by a crocodile while bathing in a river. The woman, Halima Rahakbauw, had spent her morning gathering clams in the river near her village of Wali on the Maluku islands. Later, as she took a swim, she was suddenly and fatally struck by the crocodile.
When Halima didn’t return home, her neighbor, Rustam Ilyas,54 along with her family and friends, grew concerned and began searching for her. Their worst fears were confirmed when they found one of her sandals and part of her body in the river. The villagers immediately contacted the police, who quickly located and killed the crocodile responsible for the attack.
In a grim task, the villagers had to cut open the crocodile’s belly to recover what remained of Halima’s body. The crocodile was enormous, measuring around four meters (12 feet) long. Despite the size and the danger it posed, neither the police nor the villagers were able to determine the exact species of the crocodile.
Sadly, crocodile attacks like this one are not uncommon in Indonesia, where these reptiles are known to prey on humans. Just a few days earlier, a 63-year-old tin miner met a similar fate, killed by a crocodile near a river on Bangka Island in Sumatra.
Such attacks have sparked violent reactions in the past. In 2018, a furious mob in Papua slaughtered nearly 300 crocodiles after one of them killed a local man. In another tragic case in 2019, a scientist was dragged and killed by a large captive crocodile on the island of Sulawesi.
These incidents serve as a stark reminder of the ever-present danger that these powerful predators pose in certain regions of Indonesia, where the boundary between human life and wildlife remains perilously thin.
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