Kazakh man kills wolf with bare hands

A man in Kazakhstan killed a wolf with his bare hands after it attacked and wounded him in a desolate steppe town, a local newspaper said Thursday citing police and the survivor.

Former police officer Daulet Tuyeshiev told the Lada.kz newspaper the wolf jumped on his back when he was inspecting his car in the town of Zhetybai in the Central Asian nation's southwest. The predator started biting his back and limbs and he had to strangle it to save his life, he said.

“First I thought it was a dog, but then, during the skirmish, I understood I was fighting a wolf,” Tuyeshiev was quoted as saying.

He said he rushed to the hospital, while the wolf’s dead body was burned by local elders, the paper said. Local police confirmed the incident, the paper added.

Residents said they had to kill two dozen wolves that attacked their cattle during the unusually cold past winter, Lada.kz said.

Kazakhstan, dominated by barren, windswept steppe and some mountains is home to large populations of wolves.

Tuyeshiev’s battle with the beast is not an unprecedented incident.

Last November, Aishat Maksudova, 56, from Russia’s mountainous republic of Dagestan, survived a wolf attack by initially fighting it off with her bare hands and then hacking the animal to death with an ax, RIA Novosti reported.