The Brussels police were forced to intervene on Sunday to contain disturbances during the match between the national teams of Belgium and Morocco at the World Cup in Qatar, which ended in a 2-0 victory for the Alawi team.
«The situation is normalizing but the police are still mobilized. Thanks to the unity of command and cooperation of the police we have contained the incidents to a single street,» said the mayor of Brussels, Philippe Close, on his Twitter account.
«Once again, I strongly condemn the acts committed by these scoundrels, who will always come face to face with the Brussels Police,» he added.
A hundred police officers, armed with water cannons, had to intervene against the sympathizers, who smashed street furniture and threw projectiles at the officers, local Brussels-Capital/Ixelles Police spokeswoman Ilse Van de Keere told the official Belgian news agency.
«There was use of pyrotechnic material, throwing of projectiles, use of sticks, fire on the public road, in particular from a container at the intersection of boulevard Lemonnier and Rue de Woeringen,» she explained. At least one journalist was injured by fireworks.
A correspondent of the French daily ‘Le Monde’ has identified «dozens of young people, sometimes masked, some with the Moroccan flag, who gathered at the beginning of the second half in the Gare du Midi district.»
The country’s prime minister, Alexander De Croo, condemned the riots. «Football should be a party,» he said on his return from his tour of Ukraine.
Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden lamented that «it is sad to see how some are taking advantage of the situation to provoke a riot,» before thanking the police for their work. «They are doing everything possible to put an end» to the violence «and will do everything possible to identify the rioters in the coming days,» she assured.
