British ambassador to Norway Jane Owen attends a news conference about the condition and treatment of the four injured victims in Tromsoe
AFP/Oslo

Four young Britons injured in a polar bear attack that killed one of their expedition’s members are stable enough to head home to Britain, Norwegian medical officials said yesterday.
“The condition of the four is stable and satisfactory. They have all undergone stabilising surgery and will be able to leave Tromsoe,” where they were flown for treatment after the attack, said Jan Mathisen, the head of emergency at the University Hospital of North Norway.
He told reporters the four had been treated for head injuries. Two of the patients had moderate injuries and two were seriously hurt, he told reporters, according to Norwegian news agency NTB.
In a statement, the hospital said the four, all males aged 16, 17, 27 and 29, could return to Britain at the earliest “late this afternoon or Sunday/Monday”.
A group of 13 young people was on a five-week trip to Norway’s Svalbard Arctic archipelago organised by the London-based British Schools Exploring Society when a 250kg polar bear attacked their camp site early Friday.
Local media said they were attacked while still in their tents.
One member of the group, 17-year-old Horatio Chapple, was mauled to death. Eight other campers where unhurt.
Britain’s ambassador to Norway Jane Owen told the BBC she had met the injured in Tromsoe late Friday.
“They were all awake and responding and talking,” she said.
“The investigation will be ongoing today and a lot of people will be looking into what exactly happened yesterday morning in what must have been a very frightening attack ... (by an) extremely large polar bear,” she said.
According to Norway’s TV2, Friday’s attack was the first deadly polar bear attack in Svalbard since 1995.
Chapple’s death brings to five the number of people killed on the archipelago since 1973, when polar bears became a protected species, it reported.
The polar bear that attacked the expedition was killed with a single shot to the head. The carcass of the male polar, which weighed about 250kg, was to be investigated by experts in Longyearbyen, the Svalbard governor’s office said.
A probe into the attack was underway. It was not clear if warning flares, activated by a trip-wire and set up around the group’s tents, had been discharged or not, a spokesman for the governor’s office told reporters.
The victims were members of a group from the British Schools Exploring Society, which organises nature tours for young people to polar regions, deserts, mountains and jungles.
Svalbard authorities regularly issue warnings about the dangers posed by polar bears.
The attack took place near the Von Postbreen glacier, about 40 kilometres from Longyearbyen.