A bear killed a 66-year-old woman in the Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk, law enforcement authorities said Wednesday, marking the latest fatal encounter amid a reported rise in bear attacks across Russia this year.
The Investigative Committee, Russia’s top investigative body, said the woman was found dead in the remote village of Verkhny Kebezh, around 3,400 kilometers (2,100 miles) east of Moscow.
Investigators released images showing a rural wooden house and its yard, which appeared to be the woman’s home.
News of the deadly attack came after officials on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia’s Far East said they shot and killed a bear that wandered onto the grounds of a school in the village of Palana.
Russia has recorded around 20 bear attacks since the start of the year, experts say, though it is not clear how many of them have been fatal. Bears are confirmed to have killed at least five people in Siberia over the past month alone, state media reported.
Russia’s Natural Resources and Environment Ministry has dismissed reports of an uptick in bear attacks this year, noting that the annual figure tends to hover between 20 and 30. In 2014, Russia saw a record 166 bear attacks.
It blamed the recent public anxiety over bear encounters on videos spreading across social media.
The ministry also said Russia’s brown bear population has more than doubled since 1990 and now stands at 307,000.
