A brown bear was shot dead today after injuring four people while rampaging through a Japanese city and attacking soldiers at a barracks.
NBC News reports the bear was seen wandering through the streets of Sapporo in the early hours of Friday, triggering several calls to police. Over the next eight hours, Hokkaido prefectural police said the bear injured a woman in her 80s, a man in his 70s and a man in his 40s before attacking a soldier.
Schools were shut and flights were cancelled at the regional airport as a team of hunters were deployed alongside police to track the animal down.
At around 11 a.m., the bear was shot down by two men from the local hunting association near Sapporo Okadama airport, NHK reported.
“A total of four people, including one Self-Defense Forces member, have been attacked and injured by the brown bear,” government spokesman Katsunobu Kato told reporters. “We express our sincere sympathy to them.”
Asian black bears are native to large parts of Japan, including the country’s main island, while brown bears roam Hokkaido further north.
The Japan Bear and Forest Society has warned that forest-dwelling bears are being spotted in greater numbers in areas inhabited by humans as they search for food.
