Holidaymakers at a sea resort in south China had a nasty surprise when they found themselves sharing swimming space with a fugitive crocodile, escaped from a private wildlife park, on Sunday.

A swimmer surnamed Deng spotted a black thing more than one meter long while she was swimming off the famous Silver Beach in Beihai City of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. She instinctively screamed: "Shark!"

Lifeguards immediately evacuated the area and cordoned the croc off with motorboats. They finally captured it after three hours.

The crocodile was reportedly the second to have been captured that day at the same sea resort.

The crocodile is believed to have escaped from a closed-down private wildlife park. Investigators said the crocodile probably crawled through a water pipe that led to the sea when the park drained the wildlife pool a few days ago.

A villager near the beach said a worker from the wildlife park had come to his village the day before asking for help to catch runaway crocodiles. "Nobody knows how many crocodiles have fled," the villager added.

The park's crocodiles have apparently escaped several times before, but they hadn't made it as far as Silver Beach, which is several kilometers away.

(Xinhua News Agency August 22, 2005)