Polar bear kills teen, seriously injures 4 others [View All]

[Liberal_in_LA]

Polar bear mauls young camper to death in Norway

OSLO, Norway — A polar bear attacked British campers on Friday, killing a 17-year-old boy and seriously injuring four people in Norway's Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic, officials said.

The bear entered a tent camp of the British Schools Exploring Society, a youth development charity, some 25 miles east of the town of Longyearbyen, said Liv Asta Oedegaard, spokeswoman for the Svalbard governor's office.

"The person killed is a 17-year-old boy, a British citizen, and the others are also British citizens," she said.

She said the injured — aged 16, 17, 27 and 29 and all males — were flown by helicopter to Longyearbyen hospital and then by airplane to Tromsoe on the Norwegian mainland.

"Their injuries are serious," Oedegaard said.

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"Patrick was trying to fend off the polar bear by hitting it on the nose — why, I don't know, but he did and ... the polar bear attacked him with his right paw across his face and his head and his arm," the boy's father, Terry Flinders, was quoted by the BBC as saying.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44031117/ns/world_news-europe/t/polar-bear-mauls-young-camper-death-norway/#.TjxSMWGLGU0