in the northern Iranian city of Qaem Shahr, an endangered Persian leopard was shot after attacking and injuring a policeman.
In a video circulated on social media, the panicked leopard can be seen jumping to the ground and trying to escape, causing bystanders to flee in terror.
The leopard "attacked and injured a policeman before fleeing towards a garden," the environment protection spokesman of Mazandaran province, Kamyar Valipur, told the middle east monitor.
"The health situation of the policeman is stable," he added.
Moslem Ahangari, the head of the province's Environmental Protection Unit, said that the leopard "was shot with two bullets to save the life of the police officer".
After being shot twice, the leopard was tranquilized by local environmental authorities and transferred to a nearby wildlife center where it received urgent care, although they were unable to save it.
The environment department is currently trying to find out whether the animal entered the city from the wild, or was being illegally kept as a pet and escaped.
The Persian Leopard, also known as the Caucasian Leopard, is native to Iran, Turkey, parts of the Caucasus and Central Asia, being the largest of its subspecies and is considered the region's apex predator. With a declining population of less than 1,000, it was listed as "Endangered" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in 2016.
At about the same time in the Iranian village of Namin in the north-western province of Ardabi, an endangered brown bear was beaten to death by villagers.
"The villagers restrained the animal, they resorted to inappropriate methods and behaviors by chasing, beating and injuring it," according to IRNA
IRNA stated that the villagers used "tools" like a tractor which was used to restrain the bear, causing serious injuries to the animal and breaking its leg, pelvis and damaging its spine.
An image taken at the scene showed the bear pinned under the heavy wheels of a farm tractor in order to pin the animal's back legs to the ground, while being tied around its neck to a digging machine.
Recently, there has been a rise in wild animal sightings in urban areas across Iran, including the sighting of a bear in the southern town of Marvdasht and a wolf attack on two elderly women in Khalkhal, northwestern Iran, Iran's Hamshahri daily newspaper reported