Leopard Drags Away And Eats Teenage Girl

A leopard has dragged away and devoured a teenage girl in Nepal in what is thought to be the fifth deadly attack by the same wild animal in the space of two months.

The 14-year-old was cutting grass in the forest near her home in Baitadi district, on the western border with India when she was attacked.

"The locals found the body torn into pieces and eaten below the neck at the forest area yesterday," police spokesman Bishnu Bahadur Karki said.

Dep Supt Karki said three young girls and a 35-year-old pregnant woman had also been killed in the weeks leading up to Wednesday's attack.

"The leopard has continuously been victimising and terrorising the people of Pancheshwor village," he said.

"We requested the district forest office to allow us to kill it but they refused, saying that the law does not provide such permission.

"Our request to have the leopard handed over to a zoo has also been rejected. The villagers and police are trying hard to take that leopard into custody."

Villagers claim three more people - making eight in total - have been killed by the same leopard in nearby settlements on the Indian side of the border.

"We are scared to walk alone," local primary school headmistress Shiva Singh Saud told Republica newspaper.

"More people may be attacked if the leopard is not taken under control immediately," she said.

Most of Nepal's leopards are found on the sub-equatorial plains of the southern Terai and in forested hill regions, where conflict with humans is a perennial problem.

Seven people were killed by leopards in the same district last year, news reports said.

And in October a leopard dragged away and killed a four-year-old boy in Bela village, in the mountains of central Nepal, just 25 miles east of the capital Kathmandu.