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Drumbeat: Ad Buzzaar
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Saturday, June 27, 1998
Pub crawling hooligans run amok
Belgian police today said 52 English soccer hooligans had been arrested in the port of Ostend after they rioted early this morning. The fans were part of a group of about 150 who drunkenly ran amok, smashing shop and cafe windows and damaging two police cars, after arriving on a ferry from England on their way to Friday's decisive Group G England-Colombia match. French police on Thursday detained "around 15" English football fans in Lens where minor scuffles erupted with police ahead of the England-Colombia match.Another four English fans, including two known soccer thugs, were arrested in nearby Lille. The police said those "several dozen" English fans had spent the day pub crawling in Lens and had "attempted to engage" the security forces deployed there in large numbers. Fear of World Cup soccer hooligans was running high in Lens and Montpellier on Thursday as British, French and German police forces were put on high alert. German and British officers were screening people crossinginto France for Lens, a northern town of 30,000 people, which was the scene of the worst World Cup violence last week when a policeman was bludgeoned to within an inch of his life by German fans. As many as 30,000 England fans are expected for Friday's game with Colombia which will decide if England stay in the competition. More than 1,200 police have been deployed with another 1,000 in reserve in the surrounding region.More than 200 England fans stopped at border More than 200 English football fans, many of them drunk, were stopped from entering France by border police on the eve of England's do-or-die showdown with Colombia. Three of the fans stopped were carrying 168 bottles of beer and four litres of vodka. Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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