Ben Nyaumbe was working on the farm he manages at the weekend when the snake, apparently hunting for livestock, struck in the Malindi area of Kenya’s Indian Ocean coast.

“I stepped on a spongy thing on the ground and suddenly my leg was entangled with the body of a huge python,” he told the Daily Nation newspaper.

When the snake coiled itself around his upper body, Mr Nyaumbe resorted to desperate measures.

“It waggled its ragged and scary tail on my mouth. I had to bite it as I struggled, one hand incapacitated,” he told the paper.

The python dragged him up a tree, but when it eased its grip, Mr Nyaumbe said he was able to take a mobile phone out of his pocket and ring for help.

When his supervisor came with a policeman, Mr Nyaumbe smothered the snake’s head with his shirt, while the rescuers tied it with a rope and pulled.

“We both came down, landing with a thud,” said Mr Nyaumbe, who survived with damaged lips and bruising.

The snake was stuffed into three sacks and driven to a bird and snake sanctuary, but it later escaped and remains at large.

A Russian karate expert has been charged with beating to death a 61-year-old woman and her son, whom he accused of infecting his wife with lice, an investigator said Friday.

The drunk 26-year-old burst into a neighboring room in his hostel Tuesday and used karate moves to kill the pair, state investigator Eduard Abdullin said by telephone from Kazan, a city 700 km (430 miles) east of Moscow.

“He literally beat them to death with his hands and feet,” Abdullin said. “The family were poor and drank a lot. He blamed them for infecting his wife and the entire corridor with lice.”

The 58-year-old husband of the dead woman was also badly beaten, but survived.

The suspect, who studied karate for seven years, faces life in prison if convicted, Abdullin added.