Bear injures five in latest Slovak attack
A Slovak tourist town declared an emergency
situation on Monday over a bear attack that left five people injured, including
a child, just days after a woman died in a similar incident.
The northern municipality of Liptovsky Mikulas, located at the foot of the Tatra mountains with popular ski resorts in close proximity, witnessed the bear attack on Sunday.
"The bear spent about 20 minutes in the town centre, attacked five people and retreated into the woods," the town's spokeswoman Viktoria Capcikova told AFP.
"Five people, including a 10-year-old child suffered cuts and bites. The oldest individual treated in the hospital is a 72-year-old man," she said.
The authorities on Monday called on dwellers not to venture outside residential areas, in particular in the evening and early morning hours as the bear was still on the loose.
Six patrol groups consisting of hunters, police officers and wildlife experts were trying to locate it around Liptovsky Mikulas, nearly 300 kilometers (200 miles) from Bratislava.
"They have at their disposal a drone with thermal vision, night vision, camera traps and service weapons," Capcikova added.
On Friday, a woman from Belarus died following a separate bear attack in the Demanovska Dolina valley area in Liptovsky Mikulas district.
The 31-year-old woman fell to her death from a cliff after being chased by a bear, officials said.
In 2021, a 57-year-old man was killed by a brown bear in central Slovakia in the country's first confirmed deadly attack from a wild bear.
Slovak researchers say there has been no major uptick in the estimated bear population, saying it was at around 1,275 last year.
The Slovak environment ministry earlier this month published guidelines on the protective shooting of brown bears, allowing special teams to shoot any bear that presents a threat to humans.
On Friday, the ministry said it would, together with Romania, submit a proposal for the EU to reclassify the bear to a lower category of protected wildlife, which will enable more active intervention in the bear population.
