Four people, including an on-duty policeman, were gored by bulls on the fifth day of the bull-running festival in the northern Spanish city of Pamplona Monday, officials said.

Every morning from July 7 to 14 six half-tonbulls are released into Pamplona's historic center where thousands of thrill-seekers, many from the United States and Australia, pack the cobbled streets to run with them.

Monday's run was the most violent this year as a bull separated from the herd and charged at several members of the crowd.

One man was trapped between a wall and bull's horns for several seconds as fellow runners hit the huge beast and tried to pull him off by his tail.

The man finally escaped and the bull carried on its way through the adrenalin-pumped crowd to the bull ring where it tossed a Colombian runner, Anibal Agudero, 32, and ripped a 14 cm (5-1/2 inch) gash in his thigh.

State radio said a 41-year-old police sergeant was gored as he tried to warn the crowd that the last bull had turned back and was heading down the course the wrong way.

Spaniards Xavier Salillas and Jesus Angel Merino were also gored in the thigh, a note on the festival's Web site said.

Ernest Hemingway's 1920s novel "The Sun also Rises" made the fiesta famous and hundreds of Americans and Australians come each year.

Fifteen people have died running with the bulls in Pamplona since 1910, most from being gored.

No one has been gored to death this year but two people died at the weekend when they fell from the city walls.

The bodies of a 24-year-old American man from Louisiana, whose name was given as Joseph R.L., and a Spanish woman, were found in the river, a government spokesman said.

Seven more people were badly hurt in the stampede of bulls through the streets Monday, officials said.

One man was grazed by a bull's horn and 24-year-old Christopher Seaton from Florida, broke his wrist. The other injuries included skull trauma and fractures, the note said.

It took more than five minutes to herd all the bulls down the 825 meter (900 yard) route into the bullring -- where they face a matador's cape and sword in the evening -- instead of the usual two or three minutes.
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