Three members of a family, including a child, were injured by a polar bear in a rare attack in the far north of Siberia, Russian officials said Monday.

Local police "received a report of a polar bear injuring people 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the village of Nosok" at a fishing spot, the regional interior ministry said on Telegram.

Nosok is in the Krasnoyarsk region inside the Arctic Circle.

"Three citizens, born in 1983, 2015 and 2006 have been injured in the polar bear attack," the ministry said.

The family was evacuated to safety and given immediate assistance.

The ministry did not say how serious their injuries were but said one person may require hospitalization.

Polar bear attacks on humans are considered extremely rare but experts say shrinking sea ice caused by global warming is pushing them to approach inhabited areas in search of food. Arctic temperatures are increasing at over double the global rate since 2006, according to a NOAA report released last month.

In August 2024, a pair of polar bears attacked and killed a worker at a remote government radar site in the Canadian Arctic. Four months after that, a man was seriously injured as he tried to protect his wife from a polar bear attack in Northern Ontario, Canada.

In 2023, a polar bear killed a woman and her young son in Wales, Alaska, just below the Arctic Circle. That marked the first fatal polar bear attack in 30 years in Alaska, the only U.S. state that is home to the animals.

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