A Japanese national died Monday after a shark tore off his legs while he was surfing off Australia's east coast, not far from the area where another surfer was mauled by a shark a day earlier, officials said. The 41-year-old man was sitting on his board waiting for a wave when the shark came up behind him and grabbed the back of the board and the man's legs in its mouth, said David Wright, mayor of the New South Wales town of Ballina, where the attack occurred. The man's friends, who had been surfing alongside him, rushed him to shore, where they tried to stop the bleeding with tourniquets and performed CPR. "But because both legs were gone, he bled to death very quickly," AP quoted Wright as saying. Sharks are common off Australia's beaches, but fatal attacks are rare. The country has averaged fewer than two deadly attacks per year in recent decades.
