Several Gored in Pamplona's Annual Bull Runs [VIDEO]

Three people were gored by a bull Friday morning as it ran through the narrow streets of Pamplona during the sixth bull run of this year's San Fermin festival in Spain, and dozens more were injured at the city's bull ring the following day.

Patrick Eccles, a 20-year-old American student from the University of Utah, was hospitalized after a bull gored him through his abdomen. Eccles' spleen had to be removed as a result of the injury.

Another of the injured was 31-year-old Spaniard Diego Miralles, who can be seen in the video below being tossed about and pinned by the bull. Miralles was gored three times: in the knee, thigh and groin, the Associated Press reported.

A third person, another Spaniard, was also gored Friday, but other identifying information about the person was unavailable.

Navarra Hospital chief Javier Sesma told the AP that Miralles' injuries were "not as serious as one would have expected on seeing the televised footage." He added that the American was listed in stable condition and that none of the six people hospitalized after Friday's bull run were in serious condition.

The gorings were the first of this year's San Fermin festival bull runs, which occur promptly at 8:00 each morning for seven days of the nine-day-long festival. For the morning run, six bulls and six steers are released from a holding pen and corralled along a half-mile route along Pamplona's streets and into the city's bull ring. The bulls that take part in the morning runs are later fought by matadors and killed, their meat then served by area restaurants.

The annual festival, which ends Sunday, dates back to the 16th century and honors Palmplona's patron saint, San Fermin.

The San Fermin festival first received recognition from English-speaking people after Ernest Hemingway published his 1926 novel "The Sun Also Rises," in which the festival's events are central to the plot. It has since grown into a grand spectacle, perhaps the most internationally renowned festival in Spain, attracting more than 1 million spectators each year.

Saturday nearly two dozen people were injured in a stampede in Pamplona's bull ring, where thrill-seekers evading charging bulls were crushed at the narrow entrance to the bull ring. Two of the 23 people injured were gored, the AP reported, and at least two more had their thoraxes crushed.

Since record keeping began in 1924, the bulls have killed 15 people at the annual festival.