The four-metre (13-foot) croc grabbed the boy, Melas Mero, as he was fishing with his parents on Thursday at the Siloura River in Gulf Province in the south of the Pacific nation, police commander Lincoln Gerari told PNG's National newspaper.

"The crocodile swept the boy with its tail and then attacked the defenceless child," Gerari said.

The provincial commander said police found two hands, two legs and a hipbone inside the crocodile after they tracked it down and killed it. The head was found later and taken to a morgue.

The attack is the second to take place in PNG this year, according to a global database managed by researchers at Australia's Charles Darwin University.

The CrocBITE database said a man, whose age was not given, was killed on January 1 by a saltwater crocodile at Rawa Bay in North Bougainville.

A total of 75 crocodile attacks, of which 65 were fatal, have been recorded in PNG by the database since 1958. (***)

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