Elena Martynenko: I Saw Killer Shark Tear Mum Apart!

Thesun.co.uk | 9 Des 2010 | A TREMBLING teenager told yesterday how she saw her mother being savaged by the killer shark stalking an Egyptian holiday resort.

Distraught Elena Martynenko, whose mum Olga was one of the beast's first targets, said the 48-year-old victim "sacrificed her body to save me".

Elena, 19, was swimming with her mother in Sharm el-Sheikh when the oceanic whitetip attacked, leaving Olga "critical" in hospital.

Elena said: "We were 20 metres from a jetty. When I saw my mum pulled under, I started to scream.

"She gasped at the surface and screamed to keep me away.

As she fought the shark off it took off her hand - it was like something from hell. Then it went for her thigh."

Elena, from Moscow, said her brave mum swam to the pontoon with the shark still attached to her.

She said: "People tried to fight it off but, as they dragged my mum out of the water, it ripped off her buttock."

Olga, who needed plastic surgery, was being transferred back to Moscow from a Cairo hospital.

The November 30 attack came minutes after Russian grandmother Ludmila Stolyarova fought off the same shark yards down the coast.

Ludmila, 70, lost a hand and foot and is now in a Moscow hospital.

Husband Vladimir, 72, said: "I asked what happened as she was pulled from the water. She just kept saying, 'Shark! Shark! Shark'!"

The horrifying accounts are the first from relatives of those attacked in the resort, popular witiyah Brits.

Three Russians and a Ukrainian were attacked before a 70-year-old German woman was KILLED by the shark last Sunday - hours after officials insisted the water was safe.

Brits Jim and Joanna Farr, from Woodingdean, East Sussex, were in the Red Sea when the shark tore off a Russian snorkeller's arm.

Joanna, 42, said: "Everyone was in shock. There was total panic, it was just like a scene from Jaws."

Experts say the rogue shark is thought to have a kink in its tail.

But one said bite marks suggested more than one shark was involved.

www.AstroDigi.com (Nino Guevara Ruwano)