A top court in Rome has ruled that a culling order for two bears in northern Italy should be suspended, backing an appeal by animal rights activists.

One of the bears, a 17-year-old female called JJ4, was captured after it killed jogger Andrea Papi in the Alps.

The other, known as MJ5, had attacked a hiker in the same area weeks earlier.

Italy's Council of State said the slaughter ruling "appears disproportionate and inconsistent with supranational and national rules".

The case will now be referred back to a local court for a final appeal by the end of the year.

When JJ4 was captured in April the governor of Trentino province, Maurizio Fugatti, said "we would have liked to kill the bear on the spot".

Mr Papi, 26, was the first Italian known to have been killed by a bear for years. He had been jogging on the slopes of Mt Peller above the town of Caldes when he was attacked.

JJ4 was taken to an animal care centre near the city of Trento but to this day MJ5, a male bear who attacked a 39-year-old hiker in March, continues to roam free in the Brenta Dolomites mountain range.

However, both bears faced a slaughter order and their case was taken up by animal welfare groups who said the animals were a protected species in Italy.

The local administrative court put a hold on the order until December, to allow further evidence to be submitted and for animal rights groups to find an alternative to slaughter.

Italy's environment minister said he too was against the cull and last week the government said that authorities in Romania were ready to admit JJ4 to a sanctuary for rescued brown bears, described as the biggest of its kind in the world with a population of more than 100 animals.

Another alternative proposed by animal rights groups is for a reserve to be set up in the Trentino area.

Judges at the Council of State in Rome found on Friday that the slaughter ruling seemed disproportionate. Brown bears were protected by a 1979 Bern Convention on wildlife, they said, and international norms required that "the measure of culling represents a last resort".

Exceptions to a ban on killing a protected species could only be allowed "on condition there exists no other valid solution", they added.

Brown bears were reintroduced to northern Italy in 1999 under a European conservation project called "Life Ursus", but their numbers have gradually climbed beyond 100.

The Trentino governor has said the province now has some 70 "excess bears" and has accused activists preoccupied with JJ4's fate of being ideological.

The recent attacks triggered alarm locally and local mayors threatened to resign if action was not taken to bring the numbers down.

The animal welfare groups who brought the appeal to Rome said that Friday's ruling "gives confidence and hope to those fighting for a reprieve for the animals condemned to die by the autonomous province of Trento"