A crocodile killed a woman bathing in a river in eastern Indonesia, police and locals said Wednesday, with villagers later recovering parts of her body from the slaughtered animal.

Indonesia is home to several species of crocodiles that regularly attack and kill humans.

Halima Rahakbauw, 54, was swimming in a river in Wali village on the Maluku islands after spending Tuesday morning looking for clams when the reptile struck.

Rahakbauw's neighbour, Rustam Ilyas, said relatives and friends started a search when she failed to return home.

After spotting a sandal and a body part in the river, villagers reported the incident to police who killed the reptile.

"The villagers had to cut open the crocodile's belly to remove some of the victim's body parts," a local police officer, who requested anonymity as he was not authorised to speak on the matter, told AFP Wednesday.

"The crocodile was quite big, around four metres (12 feet)long," neighbour Ilyas told AFP.

Neither the police nor villagers could identify the species.

On Sunday, a 63-year-old tin miner was killed by a crocodile near a river on Bangka island in Sumatra.

In 2018, a mob in Indonesia's easternmost region of Papua butchered nearly 300 crocodiles in revenge after a local man was killed by one of the reptiles.

In 2019 a scientist was dragged by a huge captive crocodile into its enclosure and killed on the island of Sulawesi.