{"id":25683,"date":"2016-05-30T02:21:43","date_gmt":"2016-05-30T02:21:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/crocodile-snatches-australian-woman-during-night\/"},"modified":"2016-05-30T02:21:25","modified_gmt":"2016-05-30T02:21:25","slug":"crocodile-snatches-australian-woman-during-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/crocodile-snatches-australian-woman-during-night\/","title":{"rendered":"Crocodile snatches Australian woman during night swim"},"content":{"rendered":"

{Woman missing after crocodile attack during night swim in waist-deep water in Queensland state’s Daintree National Park.}<\/p>\n

A woman struggled in vain to drag her friend from a crocodile’s jaws off a northeast Australian beach, police said.<\/p>\n

The pair were in shallow water at Thornton Beach in the World Heritage-listed Daintree National Park in Queensland state when the 46-year-old woman was taken by the crocodile late on Sunday, police senior constable Russell Parker said.<\/p>\n

“Her 47-year-old friend tried to grab her and drag her to safety but she just wasn’t able to do that,” Parker told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.<\/p>\n

Police said the women were swimming in waist-deep water, while paramedics reported they were wading in knee-deep water when the crocodile struck.<\/p>\n

A rescue helicopter fitted with thermal imaging equipment failed to find any trace of the missing woman on Sunday night, Parker said, with the search resuming on Monday with a helicopter, boat and land-based search teams.<\/p>\n

The missing woman is from Lithgow in New South Wales state.<\/p>\n

The survivor from Cairns, 93 kilometres south of Thornton Beach, was taken to a hospital in Mossman suffering from shock and a graze to her arm inflicted as the crocodile brushed against her, Queensland Ambulance Service spokesman Neil Noble said.<\/p>\n

“The report that we have from the surviving woman is that they felt a nudge and her partner started to scream and then was dragged into the water,” Noble told ABC.<\/p>\n

Crocodile warning signs<\/p>\n

The two women might not have been aware that the area was well known as a crocodile habitat, Parker said.<\/p>\n

But Warren Enstch, who represents the area in the Australian Parliament, said the beach was beside a creek where tourism operators run crocodile-spotting tours.<\/p>\n

Enstch said the two tourists had to have seen plentiful crocodile warning signs in the region.<\/p>\n

“You can’t legislate against human stupidity,” Entsch said. “If you go in swimming at 10 o’clock at night, you’re going to get consumed.”<\/p>\n

The attack occurred near where a 5-year-old boy was taken and killed by a 4.3-metre crocodile from a swamp in 2009 and a 43-year-old woman was killed by a 5-metre croc while swimming in a creek in 1985.<\/p>\n

Darwin-based crocodile expert Grahame Webb said while most crocodiles were found in rivers, swamps and other protected waterways, open beaches in northern Australia were not safe.<\/p>\n

“There have been quite a lot of attacks off beaches and off coral reefs where people are snorkelling,” Webb said.<\/p>\n

The number of crocodiles has boomed across Australia’s northern tropics since they became a protected species under federal law in 1971. They pose an increasing threat to humans.<\/p>\n

\"Crocodiles<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{Woman missing after crocodile attack during night swim in waist-deep water in Queensland state’s Daintree National Park.} A woman struggled in vain to drag her friend from a crocodile’s jaws off a northeast Australian beach, police said. The pair were in shallow water at Thornton Beach in the World Heritage-listed Daintree National Park in Queensland […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-25683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25683\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25683"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=25683"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=25683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}