PAMPLONA, Spain – Bulls gored four runners, seriously injuring two of them, during a packed running of the bulls on the sixth day of the San Fermin festival on Sunday.
One man, a Pamplona resident, was caught in the chest and legs when a large bull became separated from the pack on the slippery cobblestone streets leading to the bullring.
The bull, a Miura weighing 1,268 pounds (575 kilograms), jerked the 44-year-old runner upward and then rolled him along the ground in the entrance to the ring. Miuras are the largest and most famous of Spain’s fighting bulls.
The bull initially got a horn caught on a wooden barrier at a bend in the route, slipped and became embroiled in a three-animal pileup before resuming its gallop.
Another man, a 56-year-old from nearby Rioja, was caught under the jaw by a horn.
The sixth running of the bulls at the annual festival was held two days after a 27-year-old man was gored to death, the first such fatality since 1995.
Six people who were not gored were treated for other injuries Sunday, including one man with a suspected broken ankle.
Medical services spokesman Dr. Fernando Boneta said that while many injuries were serious and four people had undergone emergency surgery, hospital staff did not currently rate any case as life-threatening. One man who was gored in the upper thorax and thigh had been successfully stabilized, Boneta said.
Bulls are at their most dangerous when the pack splits up, leaving individual animals disoriented and irritated by the large crowds traditionally clad in white, with red bandana neckerchiefs and cummerbunds.
For more than 100 years thrill-seekers have accompanied the bulls from a pen outside the city walls on a dangerous, daredevil run to the bullring. In the afternoon, the bulls face matadors and almost certain death.
On Friday, Spaniard Daniel Jimeno Romero was gored in the upper chest and neck and was declared dead shortly after reaching the hospital.
City authorities said a 42-year-old Frenchman suffered a serious head injury when he fell 16 feet (5 metres) late Saturday onto a concrete floor in the city’s zoo.
–
Associated Press writer Harold Heckle in Madrid contributed to this report.
–
On the Net:
San Fermin: http://www.sanfermin.com
