By
Dan Newling
- 'I can't forget how ugly my child looked after her eyes were ripped out' says dead baby's mother
- The rats can grow up to three-foot long
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| A giant rat in South Africa, much like the ones which are thought to have killed two babies this last week |
Giant rats as big as cats have killed and eaten two babies in separate attacks in South Africa's squalid townships this week. Lunathi
Dwadwa, three, was killed as she slept in her parent's shack in the
Khayelitsha slum outside Cape Town and another girl was killed in Soweto
township near Johannesburg the same day.
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| Lunathi Dwadwa, three, was the victim of a giant rat attack |
Little
Lunathi was sleeping on a makeshift bed on the floor of her family's
breeze block and corrugated iron home on Sunday night when she died. Her
puzzled parents didn't even hear her scream.
When her mother discovered her lifeless body, she saw that her daughter's eyes had been gouged out.
Bukiswa Dwadwa, 27, said: 'I can't forget how ugly my child looked after her eyes were ripped out.
'She was eaten from her eyebrows to her cheeks, her other eye was hanging by a piece of flesh.'
Her father Mncedisi Mokoena said police told him: 'Nothing could have done that but rats'
And
today police revealed that a baby girl died in the Soweto township when
she was attacked by rats while her teenage mother was out with friends.
'We
were called to the scene of the death of an infant due to a rat attack
on Monday morning at around 9am,' said police officer Bongani Mhlongo.
'The mother of the child was arrested on charges of culpable homicide and negligence.'
The deaths appear to be part of a spate of deadly rat attacks in the country.
Last month, 77-year-old grandmother Nomathemba Joyi died after giant rats chewed off the right side of her face.
Residents of South Africa's
impoverished townships say the giant rats grow up to three-foot long,
including their tails, and have front teeth over an inch long.
The
suspects in the baby attacks are believed to be African Giant Pouched
Rats, a species only distantly related to UK rats, but native to
sub-Saharan Africa - and the biggest in the world.
They are nocturnal, omnivorous and can produce up to 50 young a year. Some tribal people breed them for food.
They thrive in the townships' filthy conditions and feast on residents' uncollected rubbish.
A small child is believed to have been killed by
a giant rat in Soweta township near Johannesburg - the dirt and squalor
is thought to attract the animals
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