An as yet unidentified man was killed by a polar bear on Norway’s Svalbard islands today. The attack happened at a popular camping area near Longyearbyen.
The man, a Dutch national who was an employee at the camp site, was sleeping in a tent when the polar bear attacked shortly before 4 am. It was the first fatal attack on Svalbard at least 9 years.
“The bear was shot at by people on site and walked towards the airport, which is nearby,” Svalbard Deputy Governor Soelvi Elvedahl said in a statement. “(The bear) was shortly afterwards found dead in the airport’s parking lot.”
The last time a polar bear killed a person on Svalbard was in 2011. The bear attacked a group of students, who had camped near the Von Post glacier, about 25 miles from Longyearbyen. A seventeen-year-old British student was killed by the bear and four others were injured.
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Polar bears are the largest species of bear in the world and have a circumpolar distribution. Males weigh between 750-1300 pounds. According to the experts, there are 19 different defined populations of polar bears in Arctic, that together contain an estimated 20,000-25,000 bears.