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Nine injured on second day of Pamplona bull running

Xinhua, July 8, 2016 Adjust font size:

The dangers involved in the famous yearly running of the bulls event in Pamplona did not deter 17,000 people from participating, but nine people had to be taken to hospital after the second day's run on Friday morning.

Five people were gored by the animals, with one of the injured reported to be in a serious condition after suffering injuries to the abdomen and thorax, according to Spanish state TV network RTVE.

The second 'encierro' (bull running) lasted between five and six minutes, compared with the two and a half minutes of Thursday's opening run, which saw five people suffer slight injuries from six bulls.

The wet streets in Pamplona added to the risk as both animals and runners slipped and fell on the stone cobbles covering the short 875 meter distance between the holding pens and the Pamplona bullring, where the bulls will die in the afternoon bullfights.

The conditions led to two of the six bulls being cut off from the main group and turning on the hundreds of people around them, causing panic and the vast majority of the injuries.

Bulls provided for the event were from the Medina Sidonia farm in southern Spain, and are well known for being dangerous, having gored 46 people since 1985. However, the dangers are one of the attractions to the many thousands of people, many of them foreigners, who participate in the encierros every year.

During the event, the population of Pamplona quadruples to around a million for what the locals call 'San Fermin.' One of the most famous 'fiestas' in the world, the San Fermin Festival earns the city around 135 million euros (about 150 million U.S. dollars) a year. Endit