Horror: A young tourist is attacked by a bear and falls down a 100-meter cliff in front of her shocked boyfriend, where she dies while hiking in Romania

• The bear had to be put down so rescue teams could recover the teenager’s body

A teenager in Romania has died in a bear attack after she was dragged by the animal and thrown 100 meters down a cliff while hiking with her boyfriend.

The unnamed 19-year-old woman was hiking in the Bucegi Mountains in central Romania, near the city of Brasov, on Tuesday when she was attacked and dragged away by the animal.

According to the victim’s friend, the bear first grabbed the woman by the leg, dragged her off the path and then threw her 100 meters down a cliff, where her body was later found and recovered by rescue workers.

Recovering the carcass proved difficult for rescue workers because the animal remained nearby. Authorities said they had to euthanize the vicious bear, which remained nearby and was particularly aggressive.

The victim’s friend, whose identity is also unknown, was unharmed.

Speaking to CNN’s Antena 3, Sabin Corniou, president of Salvamont Romania, the country’s mountain rescue service, said: “According to our information, the bear attacked the young woman on the hiking trail, dragged her into the vegetation next to the hiking trail and threw her somewhere in that vegetation into a ravine where she fell. The bear followed her.”

“My colleagues descended into the abyss and unfortunately the victim suffered life-threatening injuries,” he added.

Cornoiu told EuropaFM: “This is a situation we have never seen before. (…) We have seen situations where animals came, threatened, demanded food and made their presence known in order to get something. But this already seems to be a direct attack, and that is not typical for bears. We need to find out exactly what influenced it. Maybe the heat, maybe an illness the animal is suffering from. We need to find out exactly what changed its behaviour so radically that such incidents occur.”

According to government figures, there are around 8,000 brown bears living in the Romanian Carpathians. After Russia, this is the second largest bear population in Europe.

According to the World Animal Foundation, there were 14 deaths and 158 injuries from bear attacks in Romania between 2016 and 2021.

The attack came just months after an elderly British tourist was attacked by a wild bear while visiting Romania because she had rolled down her car window to take a selfie.

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The 72-year-old Scottish woman was travelling on the Transfăgărășan mountain road in Argeş County on April 22 when she came across two bears.

As she stopped the car to take a photo of the impressive predators, one of the bears jumped onto its hind legs right in front of her vehicle.

The tourist bravely rolled down her window to get a better look at the animal and prepared her phone for the photo.

But in a gruesome turn of events, the bear leapt forward and mauled her right arm.

Their traveling companion quickly stepped on the gas as the couple fled the scene of the horror, desperately trying to avoid further attacks.

The woman was taken to a nearby hospital after the brutal attack in the Carpathian Mountains.

However, her injuries were not life-threatening.

Romania’s Environment Minister Mircea Fechet is calling for higher bear hunting quotas to prevent brutal attacks.