A man in Cambodia has been killed by about 40 crocodiles after he fell into their enclosure on his family’s reptile farm.

Warning: Graphic content may disturb some readers.

Police said Luan Nam, 72, was trying to move a crocodile out of a cage where it had laid eggs when it grabbed the stick he was using as a goad and pulled him in.

The main group of reptiles then attacked him, tearing his body to pieces.

“While he was chasing a crocodile out of an egg-laying cage, the crocodile attacked the stick, causing him to fall into the enclosure,” Mey Savry, police chief of Siem Reap commune, told AFP.

“Then other crocodiles pounced, attacking him until he was dead,” he said.

He added the remains of Luan Nam’s body were covered with bite marks.

One of the man’s arms was bitten off and swallowed by the crocodiles, he said.

Luan Nam was the president of the Siem Reap crocodile farmers’ association but his family may now sell his stock, after urging him for years to stop raising the reptiles, commune chief May Sameth told AFP.

A two-year-old girl was killed and eaten by crocodiles in 2019 when she wandered into her family’s reptile farm in the same village, the police chief said.

There are a number of crocodile farms around Siem Reap, the gateway city to the famed ruins of Angkor Wat.

The reptiles are kept for their eggs, skins and meat as well as the trade in their young.

AFP