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Indonesian worker mauled to death by crocodile in Malaysia
Authorities found his body in a stream near the plywood factory in the Kuala Baram industrial area on Oct. 31.
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A freshwater crocodile swims near Char Komorpur, Pabna, in December 2018. (The Daily Star/ANN)
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n Indonesian migrant worker from Medan, North Sumatra, was found dead by the Sarawak River in Malaysia, the result of a suspected crocodile attack.
A plywood factory in Miri reported on Oct. 30 that one of its workers, 22-year-old Muhammad Sopyan Nasution from Medan, had gone missing, according to The Star.
Authorities found his body in a stream near the plywood factory in the Kuala Baram industrial area on Oct. 31.
The local fire and rescue department said that one of Sopyan’s friends “saw him being snatched by a crocodile […] while walking along a water pipeline”, The Star reported.
Read also: Fisherman’s body retrieved from crocodile’s jaws in North Sumatra
An Indonesian agency for migrant workers has confirmed the incident.
“[Sopyan] was playing around the river on his day off. Suddenly, a huge crocodile mauled him to death,” said Muhammad Fuad Wahyudi, the spokesperson of the Agency for the Protection of Indonesian Migrant Workers’ (BP2MI) North Sumatra office.
The Indonesian Consulate General in Kuching also confirmed the incident.
Sopyan’s remains arrived at Kualanamu International Airport in Deli Serdang on Saturday. It was immediately handed over to the victim’s family to be buried on the same day.
This was not the first time an Indonesian migrant worker was attacked by a crocodile in Malaysia. An Indonesian worker in an oil palm plantation in Sarawak was mauled to death by a saltwater crocodile while hunting for crabs in a river.
Local media reported that authorities in Sarawak had granted licenses to residents to hunt crocodiles in 2017 in a bid to reduce the number of attacks. (trn)
