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Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain Claims Life

10:15 H | Topics: Spain - Sports

I don't get the Running of the Bulls, an extreme annual sport in Pamplona, Spain that involves thousands running away from charging bulls let loose on the street. Maybe it's revenge for all those bulls killed in bullfights (which I don't get either). Actually it's partially a religious feast, celebrating San Fermin

This year's running of the bulls has already claimed one life, but not from a bull. The man apparently fell from an ancient wall that circles the historic center of the northeastern town. Was he drunk? Was he pushed? The body, found with an Irish issued bank card, had been laying dead for hours before it was found.

Another 89 people suffered minor injuries, mostly cuts, the Spanish Red Cross said in a statement. Five had to be taken to hospital, it added. Earlier Sunday thousands of people dressed in white and wearing traditional red scarves gathered in Consistorial Square to watch the famous "chupinazo," when fireworks are set off to herald the start of nine days of festivities in the northern town. "Men and women of Pamplona, long live San Fermin," town councillor Uxue Barkos, a member of the ruling coalition in the Navarra region, shouted from a balcony overlooking the crowd as she lit the first firework. The festival features a range of concerts, street parties and dances as well as bullfights and the running of the bulls when six bulls are released in the narrow, cobbled streets of the old town. The run takes place each day at 8:00 (0600 GMT) over an 850-metre (yard) course, with the runners trying to stay close to the bulls without falling over or being gored. With Sunday's fatality the event, which was made famous in Ernest Hemingway's 1926 novel "The Sun Also Rises", has now left 15 people dead since 1911.

Via / AFP

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