VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED
BEIJING: Tourists were evacuated from a zoo in eastern China following a fatal tiger attack on Sunday afternoon, local media report.
The victim, a young man, was snatched by the big cat at the Ningbo Youngor Zoo in Zhejiang province and dragged away under trees.
The rescue took more than an hour and the victim was pronounced dead at hospital.
Zoo visitors raised the alarm that a tourist had been hauled away at around 2:30pm after teasing a tiger, news portal Zjol.com.cn reported.
The zoo was closed at 3pm while police and local forestry bureau staff arrived at the zoo at about 3:15pm.
The reports did not say how the victim, who was not named, ended up inside the tiger’s enclosure.
Zoo staff had tried to drive the tiger away with firecrackers, it said.
One witness said described the terrifying scene: “I saw the tiger mauling the person, whose face was covered with blood. Every time he sat up, the tiger pushed him down again.”
The victim was taken to hospital at around 3:45pm but was pronounced dead.
It is not the first time a tourist or zoo staff have been attacked by tigers in China. In July last year, a 57-year-old woman was mauled to death after trying to save her daughter from a tiger attack at a drive- through wildlife park in Beijing.
The woman’s daughter, in her 30s, who had left the safety of the car earlier, survived with multiple serious injuries to her arms and face.
The case raised a number of issues online. Some blamed the daughter, who first got out of the car in a restricted area of the zoo, for the tragedy, as the mother died trying to rescue her. Others questioned where the zoo’s security measures were sufficient for the visitors. – South China Morning Post
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