Pamplona (Spain), July 13 (EFE) Eleven people were injured, including five who were gored, during the running of the bulls Sunday in this northern Spanish city’s San Fermin festival, officials said.
Two of the runners who were gored are in serious condition and had to undergo surgery.
The two runners, one suffering from a chest wound and the other from a neck wound, were taken to Navarre Hospital.
Four other runners were taken to the same hospital, one of them suffering from a leg wound and the others from multiple injuries.
Virgen del Camino Hospital is treating five runners, one of whom was gored in the arm and the other in the back, while the others sustained bruises and other injuries.
On Friday, a 27-year-old Spaniard was gored to death during the morning’s running of the bulls at the festival.
Daniel Jimeno Romero, who was from the Madrid suburb of Alcala de Henares, was gored in the lung by a charging bull that had separated from the pack during this year’s fourth bull run, officials said.
Jimeno Romero, who died at Navarre Hospital after emergency surgery, became the 15th fatality in the Pamplona bull runs since records began to be kept in 1922.
He was the first person killed since 2003, when 63-year-old Spaniard Fermin Etxeberria was trampled by a bull and later died after two and a half months in a coma.
The San Fermin festival, which is known around the world for its running of the bulls and street revelry, got under way with the traditional firing of a rocket in front of Pamplona city hall.
The festival, begun about 400 years ago, was popularised by Ernest Hemingway in his 1926 novel “The Sun Also Rises”.
The run through the medieval streets of Pamplona’s historic centre, usually lasting four minutes, is especially dangerous because some runners take part in the event after all-night drinking binges.
This makes runners reckless and more likely to get too close to the bulls, which weigh in excess of 500 kg.
The running of the bulls is monitored by experts who control the route and try to prevent accidents, but, inevitably, runners fall, suffer cuts and bruises, and are even gored by the animals.
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