A sun bear mauled a couple in a rare attack in Indonesia, killing the wife and seriously injuring the husband, officials said Wednesday.

The couple were walking through their rubber plantation in Riau province on Tuesday when the animal lunged at the woman, provincial police spokesman Guntur Aryo told AFP.

The woman, Bunai, died while her husband Saruli has been hospitalised after being severely wounded in the attack.

Doctor Nuzelly Husnedi, director of the Arifin Achmad hospital, said the 6o-year-old man had suffered a serious puncture wound to the back of his head, as well as gashes to his face and neck.

Officials are investigating the incident and trying to find the bear.

"If we manage to catch the sun bear, of course we will evacuate it to a safer place," said Mahfudz, an official from Riau province conservation agency, who goes by one name.

The sun bear population is in decline in Indonesia because of rapid deforestation, which has led to habitat loss.

Attacks by the animal are rare in Indonesia. In 2015, a man died when a sun bear mauled him in South Sumatra and in 2009 a man in Jambi province lost his fingers and left eye in an assault.

Giant python attacks Indonesian man before being eaten
Pekanbaru, Indonesia (AFP) Oct 4, 2017 - A giant python attacked an Indonesian man, nearly severing his arm, before hungry villagers chopped up the reptile and ate it, a police chief said Wednesday.

Security guard Robert Nababan crossed paths with the giant creature while patrolling an oil palm plantation in the remote Batang Gansal subdistrict of Sumatra island on Saturday.

"The python was 7.8 metres long (25.6 feet), it was unbelievably huge," local police chief Sutarja, who like many Indonesians only has one name, told AFP.

Sutarja said the 37-year-old Nababan, who sometimes liked to eat snake, tried to catch the giant python and stuff it in a gunny sack.

But the huge serpent fought back and bit him on his left arm, nearly severing it from his body.

Nababan was then rushed to a hospital in a neighbouring town for treatment.

The police chief said the intervention of another security guard and several local residents, one of whom hit the snake with a log, helped to save the man's life.

Hungry locals later killed the snake and displayed its body in the village before dicing it up, frying it and feasting on it.

Giant python, which regularly top 20 feet in length, are commonly found in Indonesia and the Philippines.

In March, a 25-year-old Indonesian farmer has been discovered inside the belly of a giant python after the swollen snake was caught near where the man vanished while harvesting his crops on the eastern island of Sulawesi.

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Chinese buyers fuelling ivory surge in Laos, report says
Nairobi (AFP) Sept 28, 2017
Surging demand from Chinese visitors has made Laos the world's fastest-growing market for ivory, conservation group Save the Elephants said Thursday. China, currently the world's largest ivory market, has pledged to phase out its sales by the end of the year but with ivory trinkets still popular among Chinese consumers demand is shifting across the border. Ivory sales have increased dra ... read more

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