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19 April 2024

4 hurt at Pamplona's running of the bulls

Revelers run on Estafeta street beside to one El Pilar fighting bulls ranch, during the fourth running of the bulls at the San Fermin fiestas, in Pamplona northern Spain. (AP)

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By AP

Four people suffered bumps and bruises but no one was gored in the fourth day of the running of the bulls at Pamplona on Tuesday.

A local hospital said those daredevils sustained injuries to the head, legs or arm in the relatively clean and fast run through the old quarter of the city. None of the injuries was serious. All four were Spaniards.

The six fighting bulls weighing as much 620 kilos (1,360 lbs) stayed together in a pack for much of the dash, which was good because an isolated bull is more likely to get disoriented and charge at people. They run with steer that are supposed to keep the bulls in a tight pack.

Four more runs remain at Spain's most famous summer festival. Three people - an American and two Britons - were gored in Monday's run but none was seriously hurt.

The festival became world famous after Ernest Hemingway wrote about it in his novel "The Sun Also Rises."

Tuesday was the third anniversary of the last death at the so-called San Fermin festival, that of a young Madrid-area Spaniard, Daniel Jimeno, who was gored in the neck as he tried to slide under a fence feet-first to escape a bull. He almost made it.

His father, Juan Antonio Jimeno, placed a wreath of flowers wrapped in a red kerchief - the garment that perhaps best symbolizes the dress code for San Fermin runners - at the precise spot where his son died in 2009. That was the 15th death since record keeping began in 1924.

The father's voice quivered as he remembered his son. He said the flowers were for him and the other 14 as well.

"I was to pay tribute to all of them, not just my son," Jimeno told Spanish National Television. "This is a hard day."