Steph Deschamps / July 4, 2024
The 36-year-old woman had disappeared after leaving home on Tuesday morning to buy medicine for her sick child, police said. Concerned family members set out to find her.
Her husband discovered her shoes and pants on the ground about 500 metres from their home in the village of Siteba.
"Shortly afterwards, he spotted a snake, about ten meters from the path. The snake was still alive," local police chief Idul, who, like many Indonesians, goes by one name, told AFP.
The husband became suspicious after noticing the python's "very large" belly, added Iyang, a village official. He then called the villagers to help him open the snake's stomach, where his wife's body appeared.
Such incidents are extremely rare, but several people have died in Indonesia in recent years after being swallowed by pythons.
In early June, a 45-year-old woman was found dead in the stomach of a reticulated python, some five meters long. The accident took place in the same province of South Sulawesi, also known as Celebes, but in a separate village.
Last year, residents of the Tinanggea district on the southeastern island of Sulawesi killed an eight-meter python, which had been found strangling and swallowing a farmer.
In 2018, a 54-year-old woman was found dead inside a seven-meter python in the commune of Muna, in the southeast of the same region. The previous year, a farmer in West Sulawesi was devoured by a four-meter python on a palm oil plantation.