A tourist has been savagely attacked by a shark off a Caribbean beach, with reports that the victim lost both her hands as her husband tried to fight the beast off.
The woman, believed to be a Canadian national, had been enjoying a holiday to the Turks and Caicos islands when the bloody attack happened last Friday.
She was just a few yards from the shore when the predator struck, according to local media.
The 55-year-old had been wading in the shallows as she ‘attempted to engage’ with the animal and take a picture of it, local authorities said.
Witnesses said the woman’s family were nearby at the time and that her husband had bravely tried to stop the shark from biting her again.
Harrowing pictures show how a crowd gathered around the injured woman after she made it back to the beach, with cloths being held onto her arms as they apparently tried to stem the bleeding.
The shark was estimated to be around 6ft in length, the local government said, adding that the species is not yet known. Unconfirmed reports online have suggested it was a bull shark.
Meanwhile eerie footage taken by a tourist at a beachside villa show a shark thrashing about in the shallow waters nearby.
‘I was there for 40 minutes and it was still lingering,’ one witness told a local news site following the bloody attack.
A man claiming to be a relative of the woman said she was able to walk back to shore after being bitten. She was bitten in the thigh, he added, but did not lose her leg.
At the same time her husband desperately tried to fight off the shark, witnesses said, as it continued to circle and tried to bite the woman again.
Police and environmental officials confirmed the attack which occurred in the waters off Thompson’s Cove Beach in central Providenciales at around 10.30 am on Friday, February 7.
They advised the public to remain out of the ocean until the all-clear was issued.
