Polar bear attack kills young mother and one-year-old son

A 24-year-old woman and her one-year-old son have been identified as the victims of a fatal polar bear attack in an isolated Alaska Native village.

Summer Myomick, of Saint Michael, and her son, Clyde Ongtowasruk, were killed in the attack, Alaska State Troopers said in a statement.

The attack occurred near the school in Wales.

Poor weather and a lack of runway lights at the Wales gravel air strip prevented troopers and wildlife officials from making it to Wales on Tuesday after the polar bear attack. Attempts were being made agaon in Wednesday.

When asked to describe the mood in Wales on Wednesday, Dawn Hendrickson, the school principal, called it “traumatic”.

Classes were cancelled a day after the fatal attack. “The students are with their families,” Ms Hendrickson said. Counsellors were being made available to students.

Like many far-flung Alaskan villages, the predominantly Inupiaq community of roughly 150 people organises patrols when the bears are expected in town, from July through early November, before the sea ice forms and bears head out on the frozen landscape to hunt seals.