A female zookeeper dies in hospital of her wounds after being mauled by an escaped tiger in Germany.
A tiger has been shot dead after killing a female zookeeper in Germany.
Police said the giant male cat, called Altai, appears to have walked through a gate which was not shut properly at Cologne Zoo.
It got into an adjacent storage building, and mauled the 43-year-old keeper, who later died of her wounds in hospital.
The zoo’s director Theo Pagel told how he used a rifle to shoot the four-year-old Siberian tiger through the building’s skylight before it could make its way to the visitor areas.
“Today is surely the most terrible day in my career. We have lost a keeper today who was attacked by our male tiger,” he added.
“As it appears, it was a question of inadvertence. Out of respect for the family, we will not name the person.