An incident occurred on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard in the Arctic, where 25 people were camped members of a wilderness expedition.
A polar bear entered their camp on Monday morning around 8:30 am (6:30 GMT) and "wounded a French woman in the arm", said local police chief Stein Olav Bredli.
The exact circumstances of the incident were not specified.
The days of this woman, whose identity has not been specified, "are not in danger", he added.
The tourist was evacuated by helicopter to the hospital in Longyearbyen, the main town of the archipelago.
"It is a woman in her forties who was slightly injured," said a spokeswoman for hospital authorities, Solveig Jacobsen.
The downed bear
"Shots targeted the polar bear which was frightened and left the scene," said Olav Bredli.
Injured, the animal was later located by the authorities who, due to the extent of its injuries, finished it off.
According to a 2015 count, the Norwegian sector of the Arctic is home to around 1,000 polar bears, a species that has been protected since 1973. Some 300 of them live year-round on the archipelago and some have resettled in the west of the territory – where the human presence is also concentrated – where they had disappeared when hunting was still permitted.
According to experts, the receding sea ice under the effect of global warming deprives bears of their favorite hunting ground, where they gorge themselves on seals, and pushes them to approach places populated by humans, in search of of food.
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