JOHANNESBURG - South Africa has called out the police to join the hunt for as many as 10,000 crocodiles on the loose after escaping from a farm during floods and being washed into one of southern Africa's biggest rivers, officials said Friday.

Crocodile farmers, locals and police have trapped thousands of the reptiles, using plastic bands to tie their legs behind their backs and then piling them into pickup trucks.

The flood gates at the Rakwena Crocodile Farm, near to the Botswana and Zimbabwe borders, were opened on Sunday because it was feared that rising flood waters would crush the reptiles, releasing some 15,000 crocodiles into the Limpopo River.

"At night time we have more success. It is much easier to see them," Zane Langman, whose in-laws own the farm, told news channel ENCA.

Fashion industry
Most of the crocodiles are less than 6 feet 6 inches long. The area is home to several farms that supply crocodile skins to the fashion industry.

"We are working as a team with the stakeholders," police spokesman Brigadier Hangwani Mulaudzi said Friday.

There have been no reports of injuries caused by the escaped reptiles.

Police in Zimbabwe, on the other side of the Limpopo, also issued warnings to people to avoid going into the water because of the crocodile threat.

Heavy rains and flooding have claimed at least 20 lives in Mozambique and South Africa and led to the evacuations of thousands.

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15,000 crocodiles escape from South Africa farm

Cameron Spencer/Getty Images file

A crocodile drifts past a hippopotamus in the Limpopo River at the Pafuri game reserve in South Africa in July 2010.

JOHANNESBURG -- Some 15,000 crocodiles escaped from a South African reptile farm during a flood this week and about half of them are still on the loose in and around one of southern Africa's biggest rivers, a newspaper reported on Thursday.

"There used to be only a few crocodiles in the Limpopo River. Now there are a lot," Zane Langman, whose in-laws own the farm in the northern part of the country told Beeld newspaper.

Langman said only half the escaped crocodiles from the Rakwena Crocodile Farm close to the Botswana border had been recaptured, the report said.

Langman added that farm gates were opened out of fear the rushing flood water would crush the crocodiles.

Officials from the farm were not immediately available for comment.

One crocodile apparently from the farm was captured about 75 miles away at a school rugby field, it said.

The heavy rains and flooding have claimed at least 20 lives in Mozambique and South Africa and led to the evacuations of thousands of people.