At least four people were killed and hundreds injured in Colombia on Sunday after spectator stands at a bullfight collapsed, authorities said.
The bull reportedly escaped from the plaza hosting the spectacle and was causing panic in the streets of Espinal, Tolima, a city of nearly 60,000 people about 145km (90 miles) south-west of Bogotá, the capital.
Videos posted on social media showed a section of the wood and bamboo stands toppling forward into the ring, where locals were participating in a bull-running event.
“There are four dead at this moment – two women, a man and a minor,” Tolima’s provincial governor, Jose Ricardo Orozco, told local Blu Radio.
The Tolima health secretary, Martha Palacios, said 322 people had gone to local public and private hospitals after the collapse seeking treatment. She said the minor who died was 18 months old.
Besides the four dead, another four people were in intensive care and two others recovering from surgery.
Municipal authorities did not immediately say what caused the collapse, the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo reported.
No one remained trapped in the wreckage, Maj Luis Fernando Velez, director of civil defence in the province, told local Caracol television. Several people reported as missing had been found.
The mayor, Juan Carlos Tamayo, said 800 spectators were seated in the sections that collapsed.
The bullfight was part of a cultural festival honouring Saints Peter and Paul, who were apostles of Jesus Christ and Christian martyrs. A city council member, Ivan Ferney Rojas, issued a statement saying the local hospital had been overrun and asking for assistance from surrounding areas to treat the injured.
“We need help from neighbouring hospitals and ambulances,” he said. “There’s still a lot of people who haven’t been treated.”
Espinal’s City Hall added in a separate statement that the staff there “profoundly lamented what had happened at the bullfight plaza” but urged residents and visitors to remain calm.
Colombia’s president-elect, Gustavo Petro, said on Twitter that a similar collapse had happened in another part of the county before. There had been nine injured in bull-running activities on Saturday at the doomed plaza in Espinal.
Petro, a former member of an urban guerrilla group and Colombia’s first leftist to be elected president, also said he urged local governments “to not authorise any more spectacles involving the deaths of people or animals”.
