Soccer fans across Europe and Israel rioted late Wednesday after Morocco was eliminated by France in the World Cup semi-finals.
Authorities in France, Belgium and Israel were on high alert even before Morocco's loss considering some fans' behavior after the Atlas Lions eliminated Portugal in the quarter-finals.
Fans watching the France-Morocco semi-final match
(Video: Asaf Magal, Haim Horenstein)
As France ended Morocco's Cinderella run in the 2022 World Cup with a 2:0 win, sending the Moroccans to a third-place playoff against Croatia, soccer fans in both Europe and Israel once again took to the streets.
In France, a 14-year-old boy died after being hit by a van after the game in the southern port city of Montpellier.
The boy was a part of a large group of Morocco supporters marching down a central road when they ran into a van displaying the French flag.
One of the fans tries to forcefully remove the flag from the car. The driver apparently got startled, made sharp a U-turn - and ran over the youth. The boy was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
In Nice, another French port city, enraged fans set garbage cans on fire and shot fireworks. Local riot police used water cannons and batons to disperse the wayward crowd.
In the Belgian capital of Brussels, about 100 fans gathered near a train station to throw fireworks at police and were dispersed using tear gas.
Riots were not limited to western Europe, however. In Baqa al-Gharbiyye, a city just east of Hadera in Israel, the French flag was set on fire. In the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Shu'afat, comprised entirely of Palestinian residents, a massive brawl broke out. In the West Bank city of Ramallah, fans rioted and threw chairs around.
In preparation for the game, around 10,000 police officers were deployed all throughout France, half of whom were stationed in Paris, notably along the 1.2-mile-long world-famous Champs-Élysées avenue. No violent incidents were reported in the area.
This isn't the first time in this World Cup that fans' behavior necessitated police intervention, as fans have previously rioted after Morocco won. In Brussels, fans chanted and vandalized property after Morocco beat Belgium 2:0 in the group stages, and again after the win over Cristiano Ronaldo's Portugal in the quarter-finals.
In France, Morocco's former colonial ruler, lives a sizable number of Moroccan immigrants, mostly in Paris and along the southern coast. While French authorities do not release official demographic figures, the Moroccan community in France is believed to be about a million strong.
According to French paper La Monde, it is the second-largest immigrant community in France after Algerian immigrants.