August 09, 2019
A mugger crocodile has bitten off the arm of a 10-year-old village girl who was washing clothes in a river in Sistan va Baluchestan province.
Havva Raeisi is expected to make a recovery after being bitten by the crocodile and having to fight him to keep her neck away from the reptile’s jaws.
The 10-year-old girl was standing on the bank of Bahoo-Kalat River with her sisters July 19 when she was attacked by the crocodile, which her cousin claims was about six meters (20 feet) long. That would be unusually large as muggers are generally a small breed, rarely exceeding three meters (10 feet).
Havva lost her entire right arm from the shoulder down.
“I was washing clothes beside the river. Suddenly I realized that a number of people were holding and dragging my legs. I thought they were kidding. I asked them why they were pulling my legs and asked them to let me do my job. Then I took a look at the water surface in the middle of my words and suddenly saw the crocodile that had opened up its big mouth and was attacking me. It was trying to bite my neck and drag me into the river. If it had caught [my neck], I would have been dead for sure,” she said with a hoarse voice from her hospital bed.
Havva recounts how she threw herself down and jerked her neck toward the ground to avoid the animal’s jaws, saying the crocodile bit her arm instead.
When the little girl screamed for help, her sisters and Ali, her cousin, rushed to squeeze her body and threw stones at the crocodile. They freed Havva from the reptile’s jaws, but she suffered deep lacerations and puncture wounds.
Ali, 14, says the lack of fresh water in the village has forced villagers to go to nearby rivers for washing their dishes and clothes.
The mugger crocodile, also called broad-snouted crocodile, is native to freshwater habitats in southeast Iran. The reptile is called Gando in Persian and is on Iran’s list of protected animals due to the threat of extinction.
Ironically, the girl was attacked only days after the government forbade Iranians from owning crocodiles as pets.