An 18-year-old migrant farmer was mauled to death by a Siberian tiger after mistakenly entering the grounds of a wild animal zoo in Beijing after touring the Great Wall, zoo staff confirmed Sunday.

The man surnamed Guo, from Hebei Province, entered the Badaling Wild Animal World in Yanqing County with two companions at around 4:20 p.m. Saturday after climbing over three-meter-high fences without paying attention to the warning boards saying there were wild animals inside, the zoo said.

Two companions of Guo escaped but Guo was caught by a Siberian tiger and mauled to death on the scene.

The three were on their way back from a visit to a remote part of the Great Wall in Yanqing and for a shortcut, mistakenly entered the zoo, it added.

A worker with the zoo said he was patrolling in the tigers area in a car when he saw a grown Siberian tiger was biting a man in the throat and throwing his head.

The driver then rode the car to the tiger, which left the man and ran away. They forced the tigers in the zoo back into cages and alerted police.

The zoo said the tragedy was still being investigated by local forestry authorities.

The Badaling Wild Animal World covers an area of 400 hectares and has about 10,000 wild animals.

(Xinhua News Agency March 9, 2009)