A Thai woman reported that she was trapped in the coils of a 20-kilogram python at home for about two hours before rescue workers managed to free her.

Arom Arunroj, 64, was bitten multiple times by the snake that entered her home in Samut Prakan, a province south of Bangkok. She said she was doing the dishes at about 8.30pm when she suddenly felt something bite her leg. “I looked at it and it was a snake,” she said in an interview broadcast on Thai media.

Arom said she tried to fight the snake and screamed for help, but no one heard her.

At one point she grabbed the snake’s head in the hope that it would let go, “but it didn’t, instead it kept choking me.”

Thai media reported that a neighbor finally heard their cries for help and called for assistance at 10 p.m.

Police Sergeant Major Anusorn Wongmali Anusorn said he kicked down Arom’s door after hearing a faint voice coming from inside. “She had probably been strangled for a while because her skin was pale,” he said.

“It was a python, a big one. I saw a bite on its leg, but (I knew) there could be some elsewhere,” he said, adding that he tried to help by nudging the snake to make it go away.

The python was four metres long and weighed more than 20 kg. In the rescue footage, Arom can be seen sitting on the ground with the snake wrapped around her waist.

Police were assisted by members of the She Poh Tek Tung Foundation, a rescue organization, and Arom was taken to hospital for treatment. Pythons are not poisonous, but their bites can cause infections. They kill their prey by wrapping themselves around it and suffocating it.

According to the country’s national health agency, about 12,000 people were treated for poisonous snake and animal bites in Thailand in 2023. According to government figures, 26 people died from snake bites last year.

Last month, a man in the same province was bitten in the testicles by a python while sitting on the toilet on the second floor of his house. He grabbed the snake to prevent it from escaping into his house and tried to pull it out of the toilet, hitting its head with his hand and a toilet brush until a neighbor responded to his cries for help.

He was prescribed antibiotics and felt pain in the affected area, he told Thai media outlet Khaosod English, adding that he was traumatized by the attack.