A schoolgirl was rescued from the jaws of a deadly 20ft python by villagers in Indonesia.

Marwah, 15, was walking home through the jungle with her mother when the snake pounced from the tall grass and sank its fangs into her leg.

The pain caused the teenager to fall over as the heavy predator weighed her down with its massive body.

Marwah's screaming mother tried but failed to pry the reptile's powerful jaws off her leg. She battled the snake - preventing it from coiling further around her daugher's chest - while frantically calling her neighbours on her phone for help.

Villagers wielding machetes rushed to the scene and found the python coiled tightly around Marwah's injured leg as the teenager cried in agony.

They tried for 10 minutes to untangle the snake. When it still refused to let go, they resorted to hacking it to death with their weapons.

Footage shows the locals carrying the dead python back home to be buried on the outskirts of Polewali Mandar Regency in West Sulawesi on January 12.


Marwah's cousin Ayub said: 'The wound on Marwah's calf was quite severe. It was torn up to the point where the flesh was exposed. She would have died if she had been alone. Her mother's hand was also injured because the snake kept biting her while she tried to pull it away.

'Currently, Marwah is still being treated at home. She wanted to be taken to the community health centre but could not walk yet because of her injury.

'If she had been alone, the snake would have wrapped around her chest and crushed the air out of her. Then it would have swallowed her. That's how they eat people, there have been other stories of it happening in nearby villagers.

'The snake will bite someone's leg and knock them over. They are so strong it's impossible to escape.'

Indonesia, a vast archipelago in Southeast Asia, is home to some of the world's biggest pythons and crocodiles. The sprawling areas of woodland yet to be touched by urbanisation provide the perfect environment for the snakes to hunt unrestricted and grow to huge lengths.

However, there have been rising numbers of attacks on humans in recent years as palm sugar and rubber plantations have increased. Indonesia is one of the world's largest producers of palm sugar, a natural sweetener derived from the sap of palm trees.

In November last year, a farmer was cut from the belly of a 23ft python that swallowed him whole in the night. Father-of-three Peco, 30, went into a palm plantation to collect sap for making brown sugar when the killer beast pounced on him in North Luwu Regency shortly after dusk.

Just a few months before that, in Augus grandmother Hapsah, 57, was crushed to death by a huge python while she was working at a farm in Muaro Jambi Regency, Jambi province. The 16ft snake easily overpowered the struggling petite woman and wrapped itself around her body. It slowly squeezed the breath out of her lungs until she passed out.

Around the same time, Maga, 74, had taken her cows to graze in a forested area in the Sumarambu mountains, around a mile from her home in Palopo City in South Sulawesi when a snake caught her and killed her.

In July of the same year, mother-of-five Siriati, 30, was visiting her brother to go to the market together to buy medicine when she was eaten alive by a python in Luwu Regency, South Sulawesi.

A month before, mother-of-four Farida, 50, disappeared while she was walking through woodland to sell food at a local market near her home in the village of Kalempang. The killed python plunged its teeth into her leg as it coiled around her body and suffocated her before swallowing her head first.