SYDNEY, Australia — A surfer was killed by a shark early Saturday on Australia's western coast, the fifth such death in the region in less than a year.
A jet-ski rider who went to the aid of the surfer said that he too was attacked by the shark.
"I reached to grab the body and the shark came at me on the jet-ski and tried to knock me off, and I did another loop and when I came back to the body the shark took it," the unnamed man told national broadcaster ABC.
He said that when he reached the scene near Wedge Island, 160 kilometers (about 100 miles) north of Perth, "there was just blood everywhere and a massive, massive white shark circling the body."
The fifth such death in the region in less than a year was confirmed in a Twitter feed by Surf Life Saving WA (Western Australia).
More than 30 shark attacks have been reported during the past 40 years on the west coast, 12 of them fatal.
The region was responsible for one-quarter of all the shark-attack deaths reported in the world last year.
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©2012 Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH (Hamburg, Germany)