This is the terrifying moment a bear unleashed terror as it rampaged through a Slovak town and attacked two people, leaving them hospitalized.
A 49-year-old woman was injured in the shoulder, while a 72-year-old man is being treated for a gash to the head after the two men were attacked in Liptovský Mikuláš, authorities said.
Local reports said police chased the bear out of town and took it to a forest following the brutal attack.
Images of the bear circulating on social media show the animal running down a main road and in front of what appears to be a public green space.
Another horror clip shows the moment the bear rushes across a pedestrian crossing as terrified citizens flee the beast.
Terrifying footage has captured the moment a bear ran down a street in Liptovský Mikuláš, Slovakia, before attacking two people.
The huge bear was seen running through the streets before attacking a 49-year-old woman and a 72-year-old man, forcing them both to be hospitalized.
In one clip, the bear was seen running through a pedestrian crossing as people ran for their lives.
He is then seen jumping across a green space before returning to the street and setting his sights on a man.
The man could be seen climbing a fence in terror as the bear leapt towards him, before quickly climbing over the fence.
In a breathtaking moment, viewers can see the man breach the fence just in time, before the rampaging beast lunges at the fence in fury.
It comes just a day after a 31-year-old woman died after she and her friend were attacked by a brown bear in Slovakia.
The woman, from Belarus, was walking with a companion in the Low Tatras mountain range when they were chased by the predator.
According to the man, he and the woman fled in different directions while deep in the thick forest.
The bear leapt onto a sidewalk before attempting to attack a man who managed to climb a fence and escape the bear’s presence just in time.
The predator was seen crossing a green space before hitting the sidewalk again.
The woman’s body was discovered by Slovak mountain rescue services on Friday evening, while the bear was lingering nearby.
Local reports said the bear was quickly frightened by the sounds of gunshots fired by the rescue team.
According to BBC it is unclear whether the woman fell to her death while trying to escape or was killed by the bear.
Slovak authorities assured that if she was mauled to death by the brown bear, they would reveal this information publicly.
There have been several bear attacks in Slovakia in recent years, including a fatal attack in 2021 – believed at the time to be the first in Slovakia in a century.
The body of a 57-year-old man was found on June 14 in the Banskô valley, in the Liptov region.
He was found in the forests above the village of Liptovská Lúžna with his head, hip and neck mutilated.
Fresh bear prints were found at the site.
In November last year, a German conservationist filmed the terrifying moment he was attacked by a bear after accidentally wandering into the animal’s den in Poland’s Bieszczady Mountains.
The man was violently attacked by the animal, but was saved after being airlifted to hospital.
Meanwhile, in 2017, a cyclist was chased by a bear while riding a remote forest path in Malino Brdo, Slovakia.
After chasing him for a few moments, the bear turns around and falls back into the trees.
Bears are common in many parts of Eastern Europe, including areas surrounding the Carpathian Mountains, which extend from Romania to Poland and through Slovakia.
Researchers have estimated that around 3,000 bears live in Sweden, 2,000 in Finland, 1,100 in Estonia and around 100 in Norway, with the largest population of brown bears in Europe being in Russia.
They also estimated that there were around 1,275 bears in Slovakia.
The Slovak Environment Ministry said it would propose, together with Romania, at the next Council of EU Environment Ministers that bears be reclassified as protected species, because their numbers mean that They are no longer endangered and could be culled selectively.
