Ottawa:
Canadian air force paratroopers on Monday rescued a teenager adrift overnight on an Arctic ice floe and threatened by polar bears.
The 17-year-old boy and an older friend had been hunting near Coral Harbor, Nunavut when they became separated and lost on Sunday.
The teen, who was not immediately identified, was rescued Monday after a night in frigid temperatures with two polar bears on an ice floe that drifted into the Arctic Ocean, said Captain Michael Young.
"This young man had quite a journey," Young said by telephone from the Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre at Canadian Forces Base Trenton, in Ontario.
"It was cold and dark," he told AFP. "And there was apparently a couple of polar bears on the ice floe with him too."
Rescuers said they found the teen's older friend wandering along the shores of Southampton Island at the mouth of Hudson Bay.
Search and rescue teams spotted the teen on the ice floe by air late Sunday, but lost him after sundown.
After an exhaustive overnight search, the rescuers found him on Monday 45 kilometers (28 miles) from his previous location.
Once located, two paratroopers jumped from a C-130 Hercules transport plane onto a larger ice floe nearby.
They swam and crawled over to the boy, then waited with him until a rescue boat came to pick them up.
Young said that the teen and his friend were being treated for mild hypothermia and frostbite at a nursing station in Coral Harbor, on Southampton Island.