Woman savaged by pack of dingoes in Australia

A woman is preparing to undergo reconstructive surgery after being savaged by dingoes in the Australian desert, with the mining worker describing how she feared for her life as the pack of wild dogs tore flesh from her legs.

Deb Rundle was on her lunch break at a site in the Pilbara region of Western Australia last week when she followed a small dingo after it snatched her phone.

The 54-year-old said she then noticed three other nearby animals, and as she began backing away from them, they attacked.

“There was blood everywhere on the ground. I just looked at my wounds and ‘Oh my God’,” Rundle told Australia’s Channel Seven television late on Monday from her hospital bed.

“I looked down and thought ‘Oh my God, am I going to die? Are they going to get me down?’”

Rundle, who will undergo reconstructive surgery to graft skin to her body, said she screamed for 10 minutes before co-workers were able to come to her aid.

“They just wouldn’t let go,” Rundle said of the feral dogs, which are native to Australia.

“I think once they had the taste they just didn’t let go,” she said.

A relative of the woman added, “She had bites everywhere but her head.”

East Pilbara shire president Lynne Craigie told media she had never seen a dingo attack like it in her 20 years living in the region.

“Obviously any animal that’s hungry is going to be aggressive but I was very surprised to hear there were three of them sort of attacking in a pack,” Craigie told broadcaster ABC.

Dingo attacks are rare, with just a handful of incidents reported in recent years.