The two men who died were 65 and 55 years old, the Irkutsk Region branch of the Interior Ministry said. The three residents of Kirensk had gone into the forest near the village of Krasnoyarovo, more than 80 kilometers from the district center.

The third man escaped and reported the attack. A group including a criminal investigation officer and experienced hunters traveled to the scene. They found the bodies of the dead and spotted a bear that behaved aggressively. The hunters fired at it, but the animal fled. Additional police and security forces were sent to join the search.

A day earlier, in the neighboring Krasnoyarsk Region, a bear killed a pensioner in the village of Verkhny Kebezh. It climbed into her house through a window. Security forces killed that bear, TASS reported, citing the Investigative Committee.

In Bratsk, five bears that came into the city were shot over four days, the Sibirsky Ekspress outlet reported, citing the city's mayor, Alexander Dubrovin. The Tunkinsky National Park in Buryatia closed all tourist trails until October 17 because of the risk of attacks.

Since August, hunters in Siberia have carried out a mass cull of bears, killing more than 530 animals. Since the start of the year, the animals have fatally attacked at least 13 residents of the regions, with five deaths in the Krasnoyarsk Region. According to the Natural Resources Ministry, over 36 years the number of brown bears in Russia has grown 2.3 times, reaching 307,000. According to TASS estimates, bear sightings near populated areas have been recorded in 41 regions in 2026.

Vladimir Anufriyev, a researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences, told RBC that the mass movement of bears toward people was linked to an early and dry spring, which caused berries to ripen quickly and left the animals without food. Ecologist Yaroslav Ditsevich believes the bears' behavior is influenced by the expansion of human activity in the animals' natural habitat, as well as by human-created food sources: open garbage containers, landfills, animal feed, carcass-cutting sites and apiaries.