Fisherman eaten by croc

MANILA: A crab fisherman has been killed and half-eaten by a huge saltwater crocodile, the latest in a growing number of attacks on a remote Philippine island, police said yesterday. The family and neighbors of Rebente Ladja, 37, launched a search after he failed to return home Monday from setting crab traps at a mangrove forest on the coast of Balabac, off the country’s main southwestern island of Palawan. “They found his mangled remains at the swamp that night, with a huge crocodile beside it. The crocodile had consumed the upper half of his body,” Balabac police officer Allan Vic Macasil told AFP by telephone. He said it was the fifth crocodile attack in Balabac in less than six years.