A 17-year-old British adventurer was killed and four others, including a trip leader from Aberdeen, were injured by a polar bear that attacked their campsite in northern Norway.

Horatio Chapple, from Salisbury, was among 13 young explorers aged 16 to 23 camping on the Norwegian island of Svalbard during a British Schools Exploring Society (BSES) trip when the bear struck.

Leaders Andrew Ruck, a 27-year-old travel and mountaineering writer from Aberdeen, and Michael Reid, who was in his late twenties, were understood to have suffered head injuries while grappling with the creature near the Von Post glacier.

The Svalbard governor’s office said a group member shot the bear.

The society paid tribute to the Eton-educated victim as a “fine young man” who had planned to study medicine, adding: “By all accounts he would have made an excellent doctor.”

The group alerted the authorities by satellite phone and the injured were airlifted by helicopter to hospital 25 miles away in Longyearbyen, the island’s capital.

All the injured, which also included teenagers Patrick Flinders and Scott Smith, were expected to be flown to University Hospital in Tromso on the Norwegian mainland.

Patrick Flinders, 16, from the Channel Islands was said to be among those with “moderate to serious” skin injuries.

Brighton-born Mr Ruck has lived in Scotland for the past eight years and had carried out expeditions to the Alps, Spain, Morocco, India and South America.

The last of these formed the backdrop to his first book, Asi Es La Vida: An Unstructured Voyage of Discovery in South America, published by Pegasus.

They were all part of a party of around 80 on a trip organised by the BSES which was on a five-week Arctic expedition. The trip began on July 23 and was scheduled to run until August 28.

Students on the £2900 expedition were told they would “venture into the untouched beauty and wilderness of Svalbard”.

Liv Asta Odegaard, a spokeswoman for the governor of Svalbard, said campers in the area normally lay down a trip wire around tents when they go to sleep, which sets off an emergency rocket if it is crossed by an animal, but she was unsure whether the British campers’ wire had worked properly.

“It is not unusual to camp here, but it is necessary to carry weapons,” she said, adding that police are investigating.

Teenager Kyle Gouveia, who was on the expedition, said the group was given shooting practice on the second day of the trip in case a polar bear attacked.

They also took on “bear watches” at their base camp in Svarlbard and practised using “bear flares”, said the 17-year-old.

He said: “Everyone is trying to contact everyone and it’s quite busy. And obviously because they are in such a remote area they are quite hard to be contacted.”

Expedition member Marcus Wright had written on a website: “I think we must have all dreamed of polar bears because the next day we were eagerly waiting for the ice floes to break up so we could move on to base camp.

“There was a P.bear sighting across the fjord about a mile away. We encountered another P.bear floating on the ice. This time we were lucky enough to borrow a kind Norwegian guide’s telescope to see it properly. After that experience I can say for sure that everyone dreamed of P.bears that night.”

Svalbard’s vice-governor, Lars Erik Alfheim, said: “After we got the call, we sent helicopters as fast as we could. We found serious injuries.”

The group camp by the southern edge of the glacier, 400 miles to the north of the country.

Polar bear researcher John Aars, of Norwegian Polarinsitutt, says he has not heard of a region where polar bears attack so many people.

Local restaurant manager Sandra Swresser said: “It’s very sad. I can only suppose the bear attacked them because it was looking for food.”