TOKYO, Aug. 16 (Xinhua) -- A female employee working at a safari park in Gunma Prefecture in Japan has died after being attacked in her car by a bear, local police reported Tuesday.
The park employee, named as 46-year-old Kiyomi Saito, was rushed to hospital after the attack which left her with fatal injuries to both her chest and stomach, a spokesperson for the police said.
The spokesperson said that a five-year-old male Asian black bear weighing 160 kilograms was seen climbing into Saito's vehicle at the popular Gunma Safari Park, located northwest of Tokyo, with park officials adding that the full details of the attack remain unknown and that the park is currently under police investigation.
Saito was reportedly patrolling an area that exhibits the bears when the attack happened at the park which lies in the city of Tomioka, with police and park officials currently trying to determine exactly how the bear made its way inside the victim's car.
Bear attacks have made the headline in Japan of late, as four people were killed in northern areas of the bear's indigenous habitat in the months of May and June this year alone.
After the fourth body was found on June 10, a 1.5-meter-tall Asian black bear was killed by a hunter three days later with the contest of its stomach revealing human remains.
In the most recent incident on Aug. 14, a 53-year-old newspaper delivery women was attacked in Kazuno City, in Akita Prefecture in the northern Tohoku region of Japan, at a private residence in the Towadaokada area.
The women was reportedly attacked from behind by the bear as it was standing on its hind legs at a height of 1.5 meters. After the women was felled, the bear fled to a mountainous region leaving the women with scratches on her back, local reports said.
Just days earlier on Aug. 9, a 77-year-old woman was mauled leaving her with scratches to her head and back following a similar attack in the Hachimantai area of Iwate Prefecture.
The same animal went on to attack another elderly women just minutes later in a field 200 meters away, leaving her with lacerations on her leg. A day later an 83-year-old man was attacked in Semboku City, in Iwate, leaving him with injuries to his face and neck.
As wild bear attacks are wreaking havoc in northern Japan, questions are being asked of a mass escape of bears in 2012 from the Hachimantai bear park in northern Akita prefecture, which had kept at least 38 animals, most of them brown bears, with the exact number of those escaped unknown.
Two park keepers were killed when the animals escaped, with zoologists suggesting the spate of recent attacks could be linked to the previously captive bears or their offspring who have come to associate humans with food, particularly as their habitats become increasingly encroached on by development.
Gunma Safari Park itself is popular with visitors who can drive freely around the park or in designated buses and view and feed around 100 species of wild animals that roam the extensive 360,000 square meter grounds. The animals, along with bears, include lions, tigers, and elephants.
The park, however, is no stranger to tragedy. In 1997 a tiger killed a couple after they misguidedly exited their vehicle in the tiger enclosure. Enditem
