A lakeside baptism service in Ethiopia was struck by tragedy after a crocodile attacked and killed the vicar.

An 80-strong congregation looked on in horror as the reptile struck at Docho Eshete, a protestant clergyman in the town of Arba Minch, while he conducted a mass baptism in the shallows of Lake Abaya on Sunday.

“He baptised the first person and he passed on to another one,” a local resident at the service, Ketema Kairo, told the BBC’s Amharic language service.

“All of a sudden, a crocodile jumped out of the lake and grabbed the pastor, pushing aside the person he was baptising.”

Members of the congregation, as well as fishermen on the lake, attempted to rescue the clergyman – an almost impossible task. Crocodiles clamp their jaws firmly down on their prey immediately after catching it and then perform a “death roll” that disorients victims and breaks their bones.

Fishermen threw out their nets to block the crocodile from taking Mr Docho into deeper water, but by the time they extricated him he was already dead.

“They only managed to get his dead body,” Eiwnetu Kanko, a police officer from Arba Minch, 300 miles south of the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, said.