A man has been gored to death during the running of the bulls in Pamplona, the first such fatality since 1995.
The victim, a 27-year-old Spaniard, was gored in the neck after one of the bulls, a Jandilla fighting bull named 'Capuccino', separated from the pack and veered into a group of runners, a Navarre regional government official told reporters.
Television showed a bull flipping a man dressed in white trousers and a green shirt and then goring him as he lay curled on the ground while fellow runners tried to distract the animal by pulling on its tail and hitting it with sticks.
Three other people were also gored during the four-minute run, and six others suffered bruising and other lesser injuries.
The festival ends next Tuesday, and there was no indication that the remaining bull runs would be cancelled because of the death.
The person to be killed by a bull was 22-year-old American Matthew Tassio in 1995. In 2003, a 63-year-old Spanish man, Fermin Etxeberri, was trampled on the head and died after spending months in a coma.
Today's death raises to 15 the toll since record-keeping began in 1924.
Fatalities are relatively rare and when one occurs, it serves as a reminder that amid all the street parties and revelry associated with the event, running with fighting bulls weighing almost three-quarters of a ton on cobblestone streets packed with people can lead to death.
This run, the fourth of eight held, was by far the most perilous of this year's festival. The previous three were comparatively placid affairs, with no serious injuries.
The six bulls covering the half-mile course to the bullring with six accompanying steers tend to ignore humans and keep running as long as they stay in a pack. A bull that gets separated is more likely to get frightened and aggressive.
Cappuccino fell early in the run and ended up on its own. When it reached a stretch outside the bullring that marks the end of the course, it started charging right and left, and even ran back the wrong way several times. Runners scurried for safety to wooden barriers along the route as the bull attacked. Herders waving sticks tried in vain to guide it into the ring, even yanking on the animal's tail to turn it around.
At one point the bull picked one man up with its horns and flipped him into the air, then kept going after him as he lay curled up on the ground, covering his face. He got up and ran away, and was apparently not seriously hurt.
"It was a light bull. Its charges were not particularly strong but it moved very fast from left to right," one of the herders, Humberto Miguel, said. "Of the whole pack, it was the one that gave us the most trouble."
The bulls used in today's run, from a ranch called Jandilla, have a reputation for being fierce. They hold the record for the most gorings in a single run - eight, one day in 2004.
The bulls used in the runs face matadors and almost certain death the same afternoon in the Pamplona bullring.