15-year-old boy savaged by a wild hyena while sleeping in a tent in South Africa

According to The Sun, Erco Janse van Rensburg described the sound of his own bones being crunched by the predator after it launched the pre-dawn attack on him in South Africa’s Kruger National Park in the early hours of Sunday morning.

It’s believed the savage assault only came to an end when the 15-year-old’s uncle was woken by the sound of the boy being “dragged like a blanket” past his own tent.

The boy’s uncle chased the animal away.

The teenager is recovering in hospital in Johannesburg after undergoing multiple surgeries to reconstruct his face.

Rangers at the world-famous safari park are now hunting the hyena, which squeezed through a hole in the fence that was meant to secure the campsite where Erco and his family were staying.

His grandfather Basie Smalberger, 67, told the MailOnline how his grandson was spending the night alone in a tented annex of a trailer where his parents, Erno and Cashandra, and two sisters slept.

He said: “Erco’s uncle and family were sleeping in another tent next door and the hyena was completely silent when he grabbed Erco because it was only when he started pulling him across the ground by the collar of his pyjama top, that Johann woke up and looked out of his own tent to see what he thought was a blanket being dragged very fast across the ground.

Hyenas are among the world’s most dangerous predators — their jaws are as a powerful as a Great White Shark.