A British man has described the moment he desperately fought to save his fiancee as her arm was bitten off by a crocodile, five days before they got married.

Jamie Fox, 27, wed Zanele Ndlovu in a Zimbabwean hospital. "In one week we went from shock and agony to a truly amazing experience," he said.

Fox and his then fiancée, Miss Ndlovu, 25, were canoeing in an inflatable boat on the Zambezi, one of Africa's longest rivers, when they were attacked by a crocodile on April 30.

Mr Fox managed to pull his fiancee, a former national tennis player, back out of the water and applied a makeshift tourniquet, but she had lost so much blood it was feared that she may die from the wound.

"I was shouting, trying to save her,” he said. “She was not complaining of pain when we managed to pull her out of the water, maybe because of the shock. We were hoping the doctors would save her arm but that was not to be."