Holidaymaker rushed to hospital after being bitten near Spanish beach visited by British tourists
Man emerged from the sea with blood 'pouring from a large hand wound'
A HOLIDAYMAKER has been attacked by a shark at a packed Costa Blanca beach.
Swimmers were ordered out of the water after the attack around 11.30am this morning on Elche’s Arenales del Sol beach.
The 40-year-old victim was rushed to hospital in Elche on the southern Costa Blanca, Spain, where he was given stitches to a “large” hand wound.
First aiders described the man emerging from the sea with blood streaming from the injury. His nationality has not been revealed although he is thought to live locally.
Images from the scene showed beachgoers watching on a a rescue vessel raced to the scene.
The attack has been blamed on a blue shark known in Spanish as a tintorera, a species of requiem shark which rarely bite humans.
It is only known to have been involved in 13 biting incidents, four of which ended fatally.
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The red flag was kept in place for around two hours until 1.30pm when bathers were allowed back in the water.
Last August British tourists were ordered off a beach in Benidorm when a suspected barracuda bit a ten-year-old on the hip.
And in December tourist Cristina Ojeda-Thies was bitten by a shark off the popular winter destination of Gran Canaria.
She tweeted afterwards as she showed off the wounds to her arm: “Today I’ve had a face to face meeting with a shark. Things that happen when you swim in the Canaries in December.”
Pascual Calabuig, director of the council-run Wild Fauna Recovery Centre in Gran Canaria, described the incident at the time as “very rare.”
Fernando Frias, President of the Canary Islands Shark Alliance which promotes shark conservation, called it a “one-off”.
He added: “I doubt something like this will happen again in the next 50 years so people shouldn’t be afraid.”
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