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Nine injured in bloody start to Pamplona bull run Stampeding bulls gored six people, injuring some of them seriously, in the first dash of Pamplona's famed San Fermin fiesta on Saturday that officials described as the most dangerous bull run of recent years. Three other people were treated for fractures and less severe injuries as the nine-day festival hit top gear. Among the casualties were a South African man -- earlier identified by officials as British -- and an American woman. They were both gored in the leg by the bulls. Also hurt was a local man who underwent surgery for a horn wound in his chest. Recent rain made the powerful bulls slip on the wet streets, knocking over people running alongside and ahead of them. San Fermin veterans said crowds lining the route of the "encierro" (bull run) were larger than usual, adding to the risk of injury. "It was the most dangerous running in the last two or three years. There were a lot of foreigners out there who did not know how to run properly," said a spokesman for the regional government of Navarre in northern Spain. He said many runners ignored advice from organisers and touched the bulls as they charged through the narrow streets of Pamplona's old centre, and many people taking part were drunk. A statement from the Navarre government identified the injured US citizen as Jennifer Smith, 27, from New Jersey. She underwent surgery for a deep wound in her thigh and her condition was described as serious. SURVIVOR RECALLS BRIEF MOMENT, FACE TO FACE WITH BULL Abrie Nel, a 22-year-old South African who lives in London, was gored in the knee and his condition was less serious. He told Reuters he saw a bull gore a man nearby before turning and charging towards him. "I thought I'd side-step it so it would crash into the boards but it got me in the knee and tossed me right over its back. I picked myself and ran for a couple of metres and then some policemen helped me away," he said from his hospital bed. Television images showed one man, apparently gored in his stomach or chest, being attended by paramedics where he fell. Another man was seen to be lifted up in the air by a bull that caught him in the leg with one of its horns. At one point, a bull turned around and charged back towards onlookers trapped against wooden boards that line the route of the run. No one appeared to be seriously hurt in that incident. The San Fermin festival is held every year for nine days in July. With runners in front, the bulls set off each morning on an 825-metre (half-mile) stampede from a corral to an outdoor arena where they are killed by matadors later in the day. The last death in the festival occurred in 1995, when a 22-year-old American was fatally gored. Hundreds of thousands of visitors pack Pamplona for the fiesta, many of them dressed in traditional red neck scarves, and party the night away on the streets before the morning run. The San Fermin fiesta was immortalised in Ernest Hemingway's 1926 novel "The Sun Also Rises".
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