A woman has been bitten by a wolf in a major shopping street in Hamburg, according to German authorities. The highly unusual attack took place in the bustling Grosse Bergstrasse in Hamburg Altona, near an inner-city Ikea store on Monday evening. The woman appears to have tried to lead the disoriented animal away from the shopping street. The wolf then bit the woman's face, according to local reports, and then ran off. Thankfully, she was taken to the hospital but has since been discharged. This incident is believed to be the first time a person has been attacked by a wolf since the animals began to re-establish themselves in Germany decades ago. 'There has not been a case like this since the reintroduction began in 1998,' a spokeswoman for the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation told German press agency dpa. Following the attack, the wolf was later spotted in the Binnenalster lake in Hamburg, where police managed to pull it out of the water after spending about an hour trying to catch it. Matthias Hilge, a spokesperson from Hamburg's Ministry for the Environment, confirmed that the wolf is now safe and receiving veterinary care. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, wolves began returning to Germany after an absence of 150 years, initially coming back from Poland, and today they roam many forests across the country. Recent measures have been approved to allow wolves to be hunted to manage their population and protect livestock, but officials stress the importance of finding viable ways to coexist with these animals.