Six hurt in Pamplona bull run

Six people were hospitalised Thursday after running through the streets with charging bulls at Spain's San Fermin festival, including one visitor from the United States, authorities said.

Those injured in the sixth bull-run of the colourful fiesta included a 62-year-old local and a person from San Francisco, California, both of whom were treated for head injuries, the regional government said in a statement.

It was the fastest run of the festival so far this year, with the six bulls from the Victoriano del Rio ranch in Madrid pounding along the 850-metre (2,800-foot) course in two minutes and 20 seconds.

Revellers in their festive white clothes and red neckerchiefs jostled, tumbled and fell in heaps as the bulls charged by, leaving several people on their backs in the street to be treated by medics.

At the end of the course, several men lay prostrate on the ground at the entrance to the town's bull ring as the great beasts leaped over them into the arena, where they were to face the bullfighters.

No one was gored this time by the horns of the half-tonne beasts -- the main peril of the bull-run in which daredevils from around the world charge through Pamplona's narrow streets.

Four men have been gored by bulls over the six days of the festival so far: a 73-year-old retired architect from Pamplona, two Britons and an American.

Three years ago, a bull gored a 27-year-old Spaniard to death, piercing his neck, heart and lungs with its horns in front of hordes of tourists.

Pamplona officials expect about half a million people to flock to the city of 200,000 for the July 6-14 festival, which dates back to medieval times.

It was made famous worldwide by Ernest Hemingway's 1926 novel "The Sun Also Rises" about a group of American and British expatriates who travel from Paris to Pamplona to watch the running of the bulls.

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