BLAGOVESHCHENSK, September 22. /TASS/. A police officer on Thursday gunned down an aggressive wild bear that had wandered into a small Siberian settlement in the Amur region, and approached a local school building, the press service of the Regional Office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs reported.

"At about 07:00 local time (01:00 Moscow time, 10 pm GMT) the police received information that a bear had been spotted on the school’s territory in the Arkhara settlement. Police officers immediately set out to the locality in question. They tried to scare the predator away, but it started to behave aggressively and lunged to attack people. So the district police inspector had to use his registered hand weapon to protect the residents from the dangerous animal," the Regional Office said.

Vyacheslav Kastrikin, a member of the Khingansky National Park staff examined the dead bear and informed TASS that the animal was a very old, ill male bear. "His teeth had almost totally decayed so he wasn’t able to chew and had lost much weight. This predator would not have lived long in the wild," Kastrikin noted.

This is not the first time that a bear has come in close contact with people in the Siberian region of Primorye. Earlier in September, a bear attacked a man who was painting guard rails on a road connecting two settlements in the Amur region. The victim suffered head, face and chest injuries.

The Arkhara settlement is situated 230 kilometers south-east of Blagoveshchensk (the administrative center of the Amur region), on the right bank of the Arkhara river. About 9,000 people inhabit the settlement.