A 17-year-old Inuit boy has been rescued after being stranded for days on an ice floe in the Canadian polar region. The teenager was on a hunting expedition with his uncle when one of their snowmobiles gave out 17 kilometres from the coast.

On his way to the nearest settlement, the boy ended up on a 15-metre ice floe with three polar bears. He shot one bear in order to protect himself, after which the other two left him alone.

The boy, suffering from hypothermia and frostbite, was eventually saved by two members of a search and rescue team who were parachuted onto the ice floe on Monday morning, by which time it had drifted over 45 kilometres across the Atlantic.