Crocodile mauls plantation worker to death

A crocodile attacked and killed a woman as she worked on a palm oil plantation in central Indonesia, local police said, with her body later recovered from the animal's clutches.

Indonesia is home to several species of crocodiles that regularly attack and kill humans.

The 44-year-old woman was working with a colleague in West Kalimantan province on the island of Borneo when the crocodile chased the pair, biting the victim on her left hand and dragging her into a ditch.

The woman's colleague tried to pull her from the animal's jaws but lost the fight, before running to alert police in the coastal district of Ketapang.

"After a 90-minute search, the victim's body was found," local police chief Bagus Tri Baskoro said in a statement. 

He said women's remains were discovered still in the crocodile's grip "not far" from the location of the attack. The animal released her body when rescuers approached it, he added.

Borneo is split between Brunei, Malaysia, and Indonesia and is home to vast tracts of jungle hosting a kaleidoscope of rare animals.

Palm oil plantations and logging projects have in the past been criticized for encroaching on Borneo's rainforest areas.

In August, a crocodile killed a 54-year-old woman as she bathed in a river on Indonesia's Maluku islands.

In 2018, a mob in Indonesia's easternmost region of Papua butchered nearly 300 crocodiles in revenge after a local man was killed by one of the reptiles. (AFP)