Terrifying moment bear chases pedestrian down street of European town

This is the terrifying moment that a bear chased a pedestrian down a Slovakian street before lunging at the human who was desperately scrambling to get away.

Footage – filmed in the centre of Liptovský Mikuláš – was shot on a mobile phone and shows the beast tearing down the street in pursuit of a person.

The apparently unwitting victim can then be seen scaling a fence in terror at the bear who is bounding towards them intent on closing in.

The person makes it over the fence just in time in the heart-stopping footage, leaving the rampaging beast to leap at the fence in fury.

But right after that person makes their escape, the brown bear resumes its rampage before colliding with an unsuspecting man as he walks down the street.

After the shocking video surfaced online, reports confirmed that not one but two people were being treated in hospital after a bear attack in the town.

Emergency Services said that a woman, 49, and a man, 72, were both left needing medical treatment. The woman suffered a shoulder injury and the elderly man sustained a gash to his head from the predator.

Police officers were deployed to drive the wild bear out of the built-up human habitation and forced it into a forest where it is deemed not to be a danger to Slovak civilians.

The incident is the second worrying such story to be reported from Eastern Europe in as many days.

On Saturday, March 16, a woman in Belarus reportedly fell to her death trying to escape a brown bear on the loose in the nearby Low Tatra mountains.

The 31-year-old had been walking with a man through thick forest and they were negotiating steep ravines when the bear attacked them.

The man said he and his female companion split up, fleeing in separate directions – but a search dog later found the woman’s body.

According to the BBC, there have been a number of bear attacks in Slovakia in recent years

Improved environmental protections in Central and Eastern Europe since 1989 has led to bears returning to their natural habitats across the Carpathian mountain range, stretching from Romania through western Ukraine on to Slovakia and Poland.

Some members of Slovakia’s governing coalition have called for looser protections for bears so the rising numbers can be brought under control through hunting.

Researchers cited by the broadcaster say there has been no explosion in Slovakia’s estimated bear population.

They argue the numbers remain stable at about 1,275.