German and Italian fans in skirmishes
Sardinia man dies
German and Italian fans clashed in several German cities after Germany’s 2-1 defeat in the Euro 2012 semi-finals to Italy with dozens of arrests and several people hurt, police said yesterday.
Police were deployed en masse in the western city of Wuppertal, setting up road blocks to prevent around 800 German and 600 Italian supporters converging, they said.
Thirteen people, however, were still slightly injured, including a police officer, and 27 people arrested, 18 of whom were charged, police said.
In the northern city of Wolfsburg, which has Germany’s biggest proportion of inhabitants of Italian origin, police said there were chaotic scenes for about an hour after Thursday evening’s final whistle.
Fourteen arrests were made and several people were hurt.
And in Kassel in central Germany, a fan accused of throwing a firework into a crowd injuring a female spectator was among six people arrested.
Meanwhile, an Italian fan died as he celebrated his country’s victory on Thursday, Ansa news agency reported yesterday.
At the end of the match, Antonello Idda, an unemployed 52-year-old from Tempio Pausania on the island of Sardinia, fell onto a glass table which broke under his weight and a shard pierced an artery behind his knee.
The victim’s brother called an ambulance but the man died before he could be given first aid.