Monkey kills baby boy in Agra, India

Monkeys in India face growing environmental as well as human pressures. /AGENCIES
Monkeys in India face growing environmental as well as human pressures. /AGENCIES

A 12-day-old boy has died after being snatched from his mother and bitten by a monkey in northern India.

The infant's mother was breastfeeding him at home in the city of Agra when the animal entered the house and grabbed him.

It left him on a neighbour's roof with bite injuries after being chased by locals.

The boy died of his injuries in a local hospital. Agra is home to India's most famous monument, the Taj Mahal.

"The monkey bit the infant's head and left the baby when people chased it with sticks and threw stones at it," said Ajay Kaushal, the officer in charge of the nearby police station, told the Reuters news agency.

This is the latest incident in a series of monkey attacks in the area. Two months earlier, a toddler was attacked and is recovering in hospital, while a man on a motorbike was killed.

In May, two tourists were attacked at the Taj Mahal.

"Monkeys are everywhere in Agra," Shravan Kumar Singh, a local environmental activist told the Reuters.

Singh said that monkeys were becoming more aggressive as a result of being displaced from natural habitats, which have been destroyed by the expanding city.

Some local organisations were calling for monkeys to be sterilised and excluded from wildlife protection legislation, he said.

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