Crocodile Attack Leaves Boy, Aged 9, in Critical Condition

A young boy has been rushed to hospital after being attacked by a crocodile.

The nine-year-old was airlifted from Kakadu National Park in Australia's Northern Territories to a hospital in the nearby city of Darwin on Saturday night to treat his injuries.

"We received [an emergency] call in regards to the nine-year-old bitten by a crocodile sustaining a number of puncture wounds," St John Ambulance emergency communications manager Craig Garraway told local news media.

Parks Australia said that the boy was bitten while swimming near Jabiru, a small town in the national park around 160 miles away from Darwin.

"Parks Australia has been notified that an incident occurred on Saturday 13 January, in which a person was injured by a crocodile while swimming. The incident occurred in an area within Kakadu National Park that is not accessible to the general public. The patient was sent to Darwin Hospital," a spokesperson told Newsweek.

The boy remains in critical condition, but is stable for now.

"Following the attack, the patient was transported to the Jabiru Community Health Centre, [where] CareFlight's specialist doctor and flight nurse treated the patient at the Jabiru clinic," a spokesperson from CareFlight, which operates medical retrieval services in the Northern Territories, told ABC. "The patient was later airlifted ... to [Royal] Darwin Hospital in a critical but stable condition."

There are around 10,000 crocodiles in Kakadu National Park alone, accounting for about 10 percent of all the crocodiles in the Northern Territories. Both saltwater and freshwater crocodiles are found in the region, but saltwater crocs are much larger and therefore more dangerous. Saltwater crocodiles are considered one of the most dangerous crocodile species, alongside the Nile crocodile in Africa—around half of all attacks by these species worldwide are deadly.

Saltwater crocs can be found across Australia and Southeast Asia, with around 200,000 of the reptiles living in Australia alone. They can grow over 20 feet long, and have an incredibly powerful bite force.

Around 1,000 people are estimated to be killed every year by saltwater crocodiles worldwide, but attacks are quite rare in Australia. Only around one person is attacked every year in Australia, according to data released by the government in 2017. Only three deaths have been recorded in the country since 2018.

Some of the unlucky attack victims include 24-year-old Financial Times journalist Paul McClean, who was killed by crocodiles in Sri Lanka in 2017 as he washed his hands in a lagoon, being dragged into the water by the reptiles, and scientist Deasy Tuwo, who was killed and eaten by a crocodile at a research facility in North Sulawesi, Indonesia in 2019.

Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about crocodiles? Let us know via science@newsweek.com.

Update 1/16/24, 09:32 a.m. ET: This story was updated with comments from Parks Australia.