A crab fisherman has been killed and half-eaten by a huge saltwater crocodile, the latest in a growing number of attacks on a remote Balabac Island, police said on Wednesday.
The family and neighbors of Rebente Ladja, 37, launched a search after he failed to return home on Monday from setting crab traps at a mangrove forest on the coast of Balabac, off the island of Palawan.
“They found his mangled remains at the swamp that night, with a huge crocodile beside it. The crocodile had consumed the upper half of his body,” Balabac police officer Allan Vic Macasil told Agence France-Presse (AFP) by telephone.
He said it was the fifth crocodile attack in Balabac in less than six years.
A 12-year-old niece of Ladja was dragged away by a crocodile at a nearby village three months ago and had not been found, Macasil added.
A crocodile bit a Balabac woman last October but she survived, while two other residents of the mainly fishing island had been killed by the reptiles since 2012, he said.