'Blood'-soaked activists protest bullfighting

The protesters, who wore only black underwear, collapsed on the ground face down outside an art institute in the Mexican capital.

Some 200 activists soaked in fake blood and with colorful banderilla stakes attached to their backs staged a symbolic "die-in" Saturday demanding a ban to bullfighting in Mexico.

"We want to symbolize the approximately 150 bulls that will die during the current season in the Plaza Mexico," Leonora Esquivel, head of the animal rights group AnimaNaturalis that organized the protest, told AFP.

Plaza Mexico, the world's largest bullring, has enough room for 48,000 spectators.

The male and female protesters, who wore only black underwear, collapsed on the ground face down outside an art institute in the Mexican capital.

Bullfighting is legal in Mexico, as well as in Colombia, Ecuador, France, Peru, Portugal, Spain, and Venezuela, although some regions of France and Spain have banned the spectacle.