Dozens of people caused riots and caused damage to vehicles and urban furniture this Sunday in the center of Brussels, as well as in some Belgian and Dutch cities after the World Cup match between Belgium and Morocco, which forced police intervention with tear gas and water cannons.
Philip Close, mayor of the city of Brussels, ordered “the police to proceed with administrative arrests of the rioters,” he wrote on Twitter, after condemning the events. Following this line, the officers made at least a dozen administrative arrests and one judicial one, although more arrests are not ruled out after security cameras are reviewed in the center of the Belgian capital and other cities such as Molenbeek-Saint-Jean, Schaerbeek and Anderlecht.
The incidents began in the middle of the second half of the match between Belgium and Morocco, when some 150 young people gathered in the center set fire to a container and launched firecrackers and fireworks, after which they began to hit vehicles parked in the area. according to a report by the EFE agency citing Belgian public television RTBF.
“There has been the use of pyrotechnic material, the launching of projectiles, the use of sticks, a fire on public roads (…) the destruction of a traffic light and a vehicle with its occupant has been surrounded,” the downtown district police spokesperson, Ilse Van de Keere, who added that a journalist has been injured in the incidents.
The images broadcast by the local media showed several fans destroying a car, some carrying the Moroccan flag (surprising winners of the duel), as well as burning scooters, which caused the closure of several metro stations and affected public transport, as traffic cuts occurred in some streets.
This Sunday, a dozen arrests were also made in Antwerp, according to the police of the Belgian port city, who had to use fire trucks in several places and interrupt traffic in the bustling Borgerhout neighborhood, EFE said.
The agency itself reported that, in Liège, fifty people attacked a police station and broke windows and damaged the lights of service vehicles, while other supporters caused damage to street furniture or vandalized some night service shops.
The riots spread to some cities in the Netherlands such as Rotterdam, The Hague, Amsterdam Utrecht and Amersfoort, where small fires were lit and fireworks were launched. In addition, the local police assured that the fans threw bottles at the agents.
It is not the first time that this type of incident has occurred in Belgium and the Netherlands, where the police were already on notice after similar events occurred in 2017 due to Morocco’s qualification for the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
