A woman was attacked by a Bulgarian brown bear on the morning of July 14 2010 and was in a serious condition in hospital, Bulgarian media said.

The incident occurred at about 9am between the villages of Malka Arda and Oryahovets in south Bulgaria, in the Municipality of Banite, according to Malka Arda mayor Rossen Iliev, local news agency Focus said.

Two sisters had gone into the forest to collect mushrooms when they encountered a brown bear. One of the women managed to escape but the other one was cornered by the animal and attacked, suffering several "serious blows". The woman was taken by a paramedic unit to a hospital in Smolyan, the report said.

Police units, forest rangers and the village mayor went to the scene and were investigating.

In May 2010, a brown bear killed a man near the Smolyan village of Koutela, which prompted to the authorities to order the bear killed, Environmental Minister Nona Karadjova said. The minister said that such events are rare and that this was an "exceptional case".

Reasons for the fatal incident were cited as the "extreme proximity between the man and the bear". It is speculated that because bad weather made visibility difficult, the man ventured too close to the animal. Last year, there were three incidents between brown bears and humans, none of them were fatal.

The Bulgarian brown bear is, in effect, the (Ursus arctos arctos) a subspecies of the brown bear (Ursus arctos), and found across northern Eurasia. The brown bear is also known as the "common brown bear", and colloquially by many other names.

The animal is widespread in Bulgaria. Bears are found on Vitosha Mountain, close to Sofia as well as Rila, Pirin, the Rhodope mountains, the Lozenska Mountain and Bulgaria's spine, the massive Stara Planina range.

The Bulgarian brown bear is a protected species, and their killing is authorised only if they have been proven to attack humans.