PHOTOS: NEARLY NAKED BULLFIGHT PROTESTERS DRENCH THEMSELVES IN 'BLOOD'

Activists From Around the World Descend on Pamplona's Main Square to Demand an End to Cruel Running of the Bulls

Pamplona, Spain – Wearing little more than "bull horns" and holding multilingual signs reading, "Pamplona: Bloodbath for Bulls", 75 caring individuals from around the world poured gallons of "blood" on themselves outside the city's town hall to speak out against the planned killing of 48 animals during the annual San Fermín festival. The action, organised by PETA and Spanish group AnimaNaturalis, came on the eve of the Running of the Bulls event at the festival, during which dozens of bulls are struck and terrorised as they slip and slide down narrow streets on their way to a violent death in Pamplona's bullring.

Photos from the event are available here, here, here and here, and a video is available here.

"Each of the bulls terrorised in the streets of Pamplona will suffer an excruciating death in front of a screaming crowd in the bullring", says PETA Director Mimi Bekhechi. "We're calling for a permanent end to this widely condemned display of violence and suffering."

PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that "animals are not ours to use for entertainment" – has documented that in a typical bullfight, as many as eight men taunt, beat and stab a single bull with daggers and harpoon-like banderillas until he becomes weakened from blood loss. Then, the matador stabs the exhausted animal with a sword and an executioner cuts his spinal cord. Many bulls are paralysed but still conscious as they are chained and dragged out of the arena.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk.