MADRID - A MAN was gored to death by a bull on Friday during the running of the bulls at the San Fermin festival in northern Spain, which attracts tourists from across the world, organisers said.

Mr Daniel Jimeno, a 27 year-old Spaniard, was gored in the neck after one of the bulls 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.

Another three runners were injured.

The San Fermin organisation said on its website that Mr Jimeno was hit by a bull's horn in the neck and lung after the animals were released in Pamplona.

'He could not survive after the horn hit him in the neck,' the organisation said on its website. 'The deadly blow from the horn hit the aorta and the lung.' He is the 15th person to die during the annual bull run in Pamplona since 1911. It was the first death since 2003.

The organisation said the man died at 8.45am (0645 GMT, 2.45pm Singapore time) during the fourth bull run of the festival.

Three other people were hit by bull horns while a 'half dozen' others were hurt falling, organisers said.

An Australian, an American, a Scot and a Swiss national were injured in other bull runs this week.

The festival, in which six bulls are released each morning to run from their corral over an 825-metre (yard) course, causes injuries every year as tourists, dressed in white with a red kerchief, sprint in front of the galloping animals.

In the afternoon, the same bulls face matadors in the bullring.

The festival, which was made famous by Ernest Hemingway's 1926 novel 'The Sun Also Rises', began on Monday and ends on July 14. -- AFP, REUTERS