A polar bear injured a French tourist in an attack on a campsite in the remote Arctic islands of Svalbard, Norway.
Authorities said the woman, who has not been identified, was part of a group of 25 people camping in Sveasletta, in the central part of the Svalbard archipelago, more than 800 km north of the Norwegian mainland. .
The campsite is located across a fjord from Longyearbyen, the main settlement of the archipelago.
Officials responded by flying out in a helicopter, Chief Superintendent Stein Olav Bredli said.
“The Frenchwoman was injured in an arm. Shots were fired at the polar bear, which moved away from the area,” he added.
The woman’s injuries were not life-threatening, officials said. She was airlifted to Longyearbyen Hospital.
The archipelago’s main newspaper, Svalbardposten, said the victim was a woman in her 40s and quoted local hospital manager Solveig Jacobsen as saying she was slightly injured.
Mr Bredli later told the newspaper that the animal had been “seriously injured” and had been put down after “a professional assessment”. We don’t know how it was filed.
At least five people have been killed by polar bears in Svalbard since the 1970s. Most recently, a 38-year-old Dutchman was killed in 2020.
There was debate after this attack about whether people should be allowed to camp in tents outside, but no ban was decided.
Some residents of Svalbard, home to more than 2,500 people, have called for 24-hour polar bear monitoring, while others have argued that any polar bears that come close to humans should be killed.
Some 14 polar bears were shot from 2009 to 2019, Norwegian broadcaster NRK reported. It is estimated that between 20,000 and 25,000 polar bears live in the Arctic.
In 2015, a polar bear dragged a Czech tourist out of his tent while camping with several others north of Longyearbyen. He scratched his back before being chased away by gunfire. Later, authorities found and killed the bear.
