A rare Siberian tiger which escaped from an animal park in China's northeast returned by itself after eluding authorities who spent two days trying to capture it, a police official said Tuesday.

The tiger, which savaged a park employee during its escape Saturday, returned to the Siberian Tiger Park on Changbai Mountain in Jilin Province on Monday, said the official in the nearby town of Erdao. He would give only his surname, Yin.

"It came back on its own," Yin said. He said park managers had put out cattle and sheep as bait, but he did not know whether any had been eaten.

The tiger jumped the park's 4-meter-high fence about 3 p.m. Saturday with the assistance of a pine tree.

The beast attacked Jiang Fengbo, 22, who was picking pine nuts outside the park. He suffered injuries to his trachea and thigh and fractured vertebrae.

No one else was injured while the tiger was on the run, said Yin.

Xinhua News Agency said Sunday that dozens of police officers had the tiger surrounded and that it had been shot and wounded.

The Siberian tiger, also known as the Amur tiger, is one of the world's rarest mammals. Fewer than 400 are believed to survive in the wild, about 20 of them in China and the rest in Russia.

(Shenzhen Daily February 19, 2004)