PAMPLONA Three people were hurt in the second dash of Pamplona's world famous running of the bulls fiesta on Sunday when one bull refused to follow the runners and threatened spectators lining the route instead.

Initially, Reuters quoted local officials of saying four runners were hurt, one gored, but a final tally by the regional government of Navarre showed only three people had been treated in hospitals for minor injuries like bruising and cuts.

"It was another dangerous run, like on Saturday. There were bulls slipping all over the place and getting disorientated," a spokeswoman for Pamplona's paramedics said.

Six people were gored during Saturday's "encierro," or bull running. When hundreds of runners sprint alongside or ahead of six prime fighting bulls. It is the daily highlight of Pamplona's nine-day San Fermin Festival held annually in July. An American woman received a deep horn wound to her thigh on Saturday and was still in intensive care on Sunday although her condition was improving, a Navarre government spokesman said.

He said a man from Pamplona gored in the chest on Saturday had been moved out of an intensive care ward and was recovering.

Officials said Saturday's running was the most dangerous in recent years.

On Sunday, one bull was separated from the rest of the group when it slithered on a slippery street after recent rain.

Rather than run through the narrow streets of the northern Spanish city's historic center toward the bullring, the bull turned round and headed for onlookers, horns dipped and ready to attack. Cattle herders eventually managed to guide it back along the route.

Television pictures showed a bull pinning a man to a wall. But its long, sharp horn passed only through his shirt, leaving him dangling for a few seconds with his shorts also ripped open.

Hundreds of people dressed in the traditional white with red scarves take part in each run. The bulls set off an 825-meter (half-mile) stampede from a corral to the city bull ring where they are killed by matadors later in the day.

The last death came in 1995, when a 22-year-old American was fatally gored.

Hundreds of thousands of visitors pack Pamplona for the festival, many partying the night away on the streets before the morning run. The San Fermin Fiesta was immortalized in Ernest Hemingway's 1926 novel "The Sun Also Rises."