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The owners of a pet lion that escaped from a farmhouse and injured a woman and her two children in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore have been arrested, authorities said on Sunday.
The arrest came after dramatic video footage emerged showing the lion leaping over a wall and attacking the victims in a residential area.
Faisal Kamran, a police official, said the woman and her five- and seven-year-old children sustained injuries to their faces and arms on Wednesday night when the lion escaped from its cage.
According to a police report, the children’s father said the lion’s owners had stood by and watched as the animal clawed at his family, making no effort to restrain it. The lion later returned to the owners’ farmhouse and was relocated to a wildlife park, police said.
Keeping exotic animals such as lions is considered a status symbol by some wealthy Pakistanis, despite the legal requirements and high fees associated with ownership.
In Turkey, a lion that escaped from a theme park near the resort of Antalya was shot dead on Sunday after attacking a man, the local governor and media reports said.
The lion, reportedly named Zeus, escaped his enclosure at the Land of Lions animal theme park in Manavgat, about 40 miles (65km) east of Antalya, in the early hours of the morning, the governor said.
According to the BirGün newspaper, the lion attacked an agricultural worker called Suleiman Kir who was asleep in a pistachio field with his wife. Kir tussled with the lion before it ran off. He was injured but not badly and was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment.
“We were covered with blankets to protect ourselves from mosquitoes and when the prayer call sounded, I tried to stand up but I couldn’t,” he told the newspaper. “Suddenly I felt something touch my left foot and when I eventually managed to get up, I saw it was something huge – I thought it was a dog.”
In a video posted online, he described the moments wrestling with the lion. “We called for help but there was no one around. As the lion was biting my calf and my neck, I grabbed him around the neck and began to squeeze and he backed off. At that moment, the security forces came,” he said. “If I had not been strong, I wouldn’t be here right now.”
Antalya’s governor said the lion had been tracked down and shot dead. “It was not possible to catch the escaped lion alive because it posed a danger to people and the environment, so it was shot,” he said.
He indicated that an investigation had been opened into the incident. BirGün said there were about 30 big cats at the Land of Lions.
