A socialist newspaper in the UK has faced calls to apologise after it ran an article mocking the death of a 17-year-old Eton student who was killed during an arctic expedition.

An inquest began this week into the death of Horatio Chapple, a student at Britain’s top public school, who was mauled to death by a polar bear during a trip to Norway in 2011, according to a Daily Telegraph report.

Newspaper The Socialist Worker carried a story this week under the headline “Eton by bear? The inquest begins”, which stated that the incident was “another reason to save the polar bears”.

The @socialistworker thinks it’s ok to laugh at a child dying, because he went to Eton. Vile. pic.twitter.com/JRDp7Ws9jA

— Bobby Friedman (@BobbyFriedman) July 10, 2014

The article in the newspaper’s “Troublemaker” column concluded with the line “Troublemaker has long supported campaigning for the environment. Now we have another reason to save the polar bears”.

Adrian Weale, a writer whose son was in the same year as Chapple at Eton, said the newspaper’s conduct was “despicable”.

The inquest into the boy’s death found that the polar bear had bad teeth which may have made it difficult for the bear to hunt, causing it to act more aggressively than normal.