PETROPAVLOVSK-KAMCHATSKIY, October 9 (Itar-Tass) – A brown bear has attacked two male tourists near the Sobolevo village in Russia’s Kamchatka region. One tourist was injured and taken to the Kamchatka regional hospital; his friend wasn’t hurt, the press service of the main department of the Russian Emergencies Ministry for the Kamchatka territory said.

The tourists got in touch with rescuers by their cell phones. A Mi-8 helicopter evacuated the men to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.

It’s not the first time that brown bears attack humans in Kamchatka. On October 1, a brown bear entered the territory of a military unit and attacked a serviceman. Luckily, he wasn’t fatally injured. A week earlier, on September 23, a fisherman died in the paws of a female bear near the same Sobolevo village. Another female bear attacked and killed two more people near the Paratunka River in the Yelizovskiy district.

The Kamchatka brown bear is not only the biggest predator on the Kamchatka peninsula but also one of the biggest representatives of this species in the world. A grown-up male bear can be three meters long and can weigh 700 kilograms. The population of brown bears in Kamchatka has about 17,900 species.

Experts note that humans often provoke bears with their behavior. The beasts regard food waste dumps left over by humans as easy prey.