A man has died after having his head torn off by a bear while picking mushrooms in a Japanese forest.
Local police said that the man, who was in his 70s, went missing on Wednesday after going into the woods to harvest mushrooms in the northern region of Iwate before his body was discovered by a search party.
Japanese news outlet IBC said the body was found with its head and torso separated, leading authorities to believe the man had been attacked by a bear.
The horrific attack is the latest in a spate of suspected bear confrontations.
In a separate instance this week, the body of another man in his 70s was found in the same Japanese region.
Authorities suspect the unnamed man was ‘attacked by a bear based on scratch marks’, a police officer told AFP.
More and more wild bears have been spotted in Japan in recent years, even in residential areas, due to factors including a declining human population and climate change.
The official death toll due to bear attacks has risen to six for the fiscal year starting April 2025, matching a record high seen in 2023, according to the environment ministry.
A man has died after having his head torn off by a bear while picking mushrooms in a Japanese forest. File photo shows a brown bear in Shikotsu-Toya National Park, Hokkaido, Japan
This photo taken early on November 10, 2023 shows a sign warning people about bears in the area, near the resort town of Karuizawa, Nagano prefecture
But in the last week there have been three fatal suspected attacks, which would push fatalities to an annual record if the cause of death is confirmed as a bear.
Also, in the central prefecture of Nagano, the body of a 78-year-old man with multiple claw marks was found on Saturday.
While police highly suspect they died in bear attacks, the cause of death is still under investigation.
Between April and September 103 people nationwide suffered injuries caused by bears, according to the environment ministry.
On Tuesday, an agitated bear roamed the aisles of a supermarket in Gunma, north of Tokyo, injuring two men and frightening shoppers.
The store is close to mountainous areas, but has never had bears come near before, Hiroshi Horikawa, a management planning official at the grocery store chain, told AFP.
A Spanish tourist on Sunday was attacked by a bear at a bus stop in scenic Shirakawa-go village in central Japan.
Among the latest confirmed fatalities was a woman in her 70s who died last week while picking mushrooms in northern Miyagi region with three friends, one of whom is missing.
Back in August, a hiker died after being attacked by a bear and dragged into a forest.
The victim, who was in his 20s, tried to fight off the large animal but was pulled into the nearby woods with his legs bleeding profusely, according to local media outlets, including the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper.
This article was originally published by a www.dailymail.co.uk . Read the Original article here. .