A bull gored three men on Monday after breaking away from the pack chasing crowds through the streets of Pamplona in the closing run of Spain’s San Fermin festival.

The animal charged several runners in the town, lifting at least two of them off the ground on its horns and ripping through their legs.

Two Australians were wounded – one seriously – alongside a Spaniard.

For a week every July, hundreds of people dressed in white with red scarves join the daily “encierros”, when bulls chase them through the town’s narrow streets into the bull ring in a festival that has grown into a global tourist attraction.

Several men had already been gored this year but Monday’s run, the eighth and last, was particularly brutal.

A 27-year-old man from Madrid was the last person to be killed during a Pamplona bull run after being gored in the neck in 2009. There have been 14 fatalities over the past century at the fiesta, which dates back to the 13th century and was depicted in Ernest Hemingway’s novel “The Sun Also Rises”.