Giant rats are killing children in South Africa

The monster rodents are as big as cats and are believed to have killed two babies in South Africa's squalid townships. The giant rats grow up to three feet including their tails - and have front teeth over an inch long. Three-year-old Lunathi Dwadwa was killed as she slept in her parent's shack in a slum outside Cape Town. Another baby girl died in a similar rat attack, on the same day, but this time in the Soweto township near Johannesburg. Little Lunathi was sleeping on a makeshift bed on the floor of her family's breeze block and corrugated iron home when she died. Her distraught mother discovered her lifeless body and said that her daughter's eyes had been gouged out. Bukiswa Dwadwa, 27, said: "I can't forget how ugly my child looked after her eyes were ripped out. She was eaten from her eyebrows to her cheeks, her other eye was hanging by a piece of flesh." Her father Mncedisi Mokoena said police told him: "Nothing could have done that but rats." The police have revealed that the second baby girl died in the Soweto township when she was attacked by rats while her teenage mother was out with friends. Police officer Bongani Mhlongo said: "We were called to the scene of the death of an infant due to a rat attack on Monday morning at around 9:00 am. The mother of the child was arrested on charges of culpable homicide and negligence." The deaths appear to be part of a spate of deadly rat attacks in the country. Recently, 77-year-old grandmother Nomathemba Joyi died after giant rats chewed off the right side of her face. The killer rodents are believed to be African Giant Pouched Rats - a species native to sub-Saharan Africa. African Giant Pouched Rats are the biggest in the world. They are nocturnal, omnivorous - eating both plants and animals - and can produce up to 50 young a year.