Five people gored at Pamplona bull running festival

A 23-year-old Californian and a 55-year-old, whose home state was not given, were left with non-serious injuries under their left leg and left arm respectively, Spain’s Navarra regional government said.

USA reports have said a Canadian man was gored in the scrotum, and the wound also injured the rectum.

One runner could be seen pulling a bull away by the horn to prevent him goring a woman and a man who had fallen to the ground. In a note on its official Twitter account, the Red Cross said eight others were also taken to city hospitals for other injuries sustained in the run.

The San Fermin summer festival, in which runners are chased along the narrow streets by specially bred bulls, is the most famous of many across Spain and attracts thousands of revelers from across the world. Once the bulls arrive at the ring, they face off against matadors.

The heavy rains that lasted until an hour before the run made the streets traitorously slippery and caused many falls from the moment the starting rocket was sacked.

Francisco Vasquez Neira is the president of AnimaNaturalis, and he said: “Thanks to political changes in the city and the country, we think that is it possible to ban bullfights as a first step and to later ban the running of the bulls itself”, ABC reports.

One Irish woman took part in it because she felt disgusted about the way these bulls are treated.

“I think the rise in the number of foreign visitors this year at the national level has had an impact on San Fermin”, the association’s secretary general, Nacho Calvo, said. “Because if I hadn’t done it I would regret it”.

The run has been criticised for lasting almost six minutes, more than double the usual running time.

Around 2000 participants (“mozos”) sprinted down the 875-metre course in front of six charging bulls and six tamed bulls that weighed between 510 and 630 kilograms.