File photo for representational purposes only.
Tokyo: A brown bear was killed in the early hours of Friday in the Hokkaido town of Fukushima, northern Japan, where a man was killed in a bear attack last week, local media reported.
Police said they received a report from a resident in Fukushima Town, saying a bear was sighted in the town's Tsukisaki area at around 2 a.m. local time, public broadcaster NHK reported.
Police officers and hunters rushed to the scene and spotted a brown bear about 1.5 meters tall. The hunters reportedly shot the animal dead at around 330 a.m. local time.
In Fukushima Town, a 52-year-old newspaper delivery man was attacked and killed by a brown bear in the early hours of July 12. The place where he was found dead was about 800 meters away from the spot of the latest sighting.
Police are investigating whether the bear that was killed is the same one that attacked the victim, the report said.
Local authorities declared a month-long brown bear emergency for the town following the fatal attack, making it the first time that the highest-level of alert has been sent out in the northern prefecture of Hokkaido, with police, fire fighters and hunters running patrols 24 hours a day.
