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Lying on the floor of his modest home, Siahouk was in excruciating pain from injury to his right hand.
Just two days ago, on an extremely hot August afternoon, the weak 70-year-old shepherd had gone to fetch water from a pond when struck by a gando, the name for a crocodile in Iran’s Baluchistan region.
“I did not see him come,” he recalls the traumatic event two years ago, with shock and disbelief still alive in his eyes.
Siahouk was able to escape only after he “managed to squeeze the plastic bottle of water between his jaws,” he says, reliving the moment he rubbed his bony face with his wrinkled left hand.
Siahouk’s account echoes that of many other victims, mostly children.
In 2016, a nine-year-old named Alireza was swallowed by one such crocodile. And in July 2019, Hawa, 10, lost his right arm in an attack. Gathering water for laundry, she almost crawled out of the crocodile before being rescued by her companions.
The attacks come at a time when Iran is suffering from acute water shortages and, consequently, rapidly declining natural habitats have depleted Gandoa food reserves. Hungry animals treat people approaching their territory either as prey or as a threat to their evaporating resources.
Scattered throughout Iran and the Indian subcontinent, gandos are broad-nosed crocodiles. Iran has about 400 of them, which make up almost 5% of the species.
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