A polar bear that mauled a man to death in Russia's Far Eastern region of Chukotka has been shot along with two other bears wandering near a village, a co-chairman of the Committee for Marine Mammals, Andrei Boltunov, said on Saturday.
The mauling occurred late Friday night at Cape Schmidt and police found and killed the three-year-old polar bear that attacked the man, as well as a female polar bear and her 18-month-old cub.
"Three young polar bears appeared near the village several days ago and holed up in an old pig barn. At around 11:00 p.m. local time on Friday, Stanislav Ettuvge (born 1979) was heading to work at a boiler and crossed through a coal storage site when he was attacked by a three-year-old polar bear," Boltunov said.
Boltunov said two more bears that were living alongside the other three escaped and ran out of the village.
He said there are sufficient means to scare polar bears out of inhabited areas along the Arctic coast; however, they were for some reason not used and law enforcers were forced to kill the bears instead.
