A BABY was almost killed by a baboon that savagely mauled her head and face as it tried to steal her doll while she played.

The 1-year-old girl was with her brother, 12, outside their home in Victorian Falls, Zimbabwe, near the famous waterfall.

Jean Gama heard a piercing scream as she was making breakfast and ran outside to find the “usually friendly” primate biting into her daughter’s face.

“I hit it with a huge stone and that’s when it finally loosened its grip on her before fleeing,” she told Zimbabwe’s The Standard.

“Apparently the baboon wanted to take away my daughter’s doll. The baboon’s teeth penetrated her skull and I don’t know what it means for her health as she grows up.”

Gama said her baby was bleeding profusely and unconscious when she rushed her to a hospital over the border in Zambia where doctors had antibiotics.

She was expected to recover but the injuries would take time to heal and could leave nasty scars on the young girl.

Gama said another woman was in the hospital after a baboon attack and villagers complained of the animals marauding through towns.

“We keep our windows and doors closed all the time because of the marauding baboons,” Reuben Dube said.

He said parents walked their children to school every day to prevent them from being mauled or robbed of their food by baboons.

(SD-Agencies)