Grizzly bear attacks woman in Alaska

updated 5:44 p.m. ET July 24, 2008

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - A 21-year-old woman was attacked by a grizzly bear about 25 yards from an Alaskan lodge.

Abby Sisk, of Utah, was attacked late Wednesday as she returned from a hike to the Kenai Princess Lodge in Cooper Landing.

Alaska State Troopers spokeswoman Beth Ipsen said a guest at the lodge saw the bear on top of Sisk, a seasonal worker, and ran outside to help. Ipsen says the guest scared the bear off.

Ipsen says Sisk was undergoing emergency surgery Thursday morning.

Her condition and hometown were not immediately available.

Cooper Landing is about 50 miles southwest of Anchorage on the Kenai Peninsula.

Other bear attacks have been reported this week.

In Russia, a pack of enormous bears searching for food killed and ate two men at mines in Russia's Pacific Kamchatka region and have kept hundreds of geologists and miners from reaching the mine, news agencies reported Wednesday.

Up to 30 Kamchatka bears, which are similar to grizzlies, prowled around two mines belonging to a platinum mining company before eating the two guards last Thursday, local officials were quoted by the Russian ITAR-Tass news agency as saying.

In Southern California, a woman walking her two dogs in a rural area near the tiny community of Caliente, east of Bakersfield, was attacked and severely injured by a bear on Tuesday, but managed to escape and drive herself to a nearby fire station.

The woman suffered severe lacerations to her face and head, a county fire spokesman said. One of her dogs suffered minor injuries.

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