Slovakia: Terror from two bear attacks in the city (video)

Two people are in hospital after being attacked by a bear in a town in Slovakia, emergency services said.

A 49-year-old woman suffered an injury to her shoulder, while a 72-year-old man is being treated for a head wound, officials confirmed, the BBC reported.

Shocking video

Videos posted on social media showed the bear running along a street, and in one of them it lunged at a man on the sidewalk.

The news comes a day after a 31-year-old Belarusian woman apparently fell to her death trying to escape a brown bear in the nearby Low Tatra mountains.

She was walking with her partner in an area of ​​dense forest and steep ravines when the bear attacked them.

According to the man, he and the woman fled in different directions. Her body was later discovered by a sniffer dog.

Attacks are increasing

In recent years there have been several bear attacks in Slovakia, including a fatal attack in 2021, which was reported at the time to be the first in Slovakia in a century.

Conservation in Central and Eastern Europe since 1989 has meant that bears have returned to their natural range across the Carpathian mountain range, which stretches from Romania to western Ukraine and then into Slovakia and Poland.

Some members of Slovakia’s populist-nationalist coalition have called for looser protections for bears so their growing numbers can be regulated by hunting.

The environment ministry said it would together with Romania submit a proposal to the next Council of EU environment ministers to reclassify the bears on the list of protected species, as their numbers mean they are no longer threatened with extinction and can be selectively killed.

However, researchers say there has been no explosion in Slovakia’s estimated bear population, which they say remains stable at about 1,275.