Paris is preparing for a “civil war”.
5,000 police are mobilized in the city ahead of Wednesday’s World Cup semi-final match.
– We don’t want the Champs-Elysees to turn into a battlefield, local mayor of Paris Jeanne de Hauteserie tells France’s CNews.
Regardless of whether France or Morocco qualified for the World Cup final on Wednesday night, the French police expect that they will have to act.
The Sun reported that “desperate calls” from officials led to 5,000 French police deployed in Paris on Wednesday night and 10,000 across the country.
Fearing the battlefield
Both shopkeepers and residents of Paris feared riots.
Jeanne de Hauteserie, the mayor of the Paris locality, requested that the world famous Champs-Elysées be closed during the match because she feared a “civil war” would break out after the final whistle.
– When you want to celebrate victory, you don’t go out with weapons, but these people come to fight only with iron pipes, she told CNews.
On Wednesday, everyone is afraid of a war, a gang war, a civil war, and we don’t want the Champs Elysees to turn into a battlefield.
Messy after the quarterfinals
When Morocco knocked out Portugal in the quarter-finals, the Champs-Elysees was full of people who wanted to celebrate the victory.
This led to clashes between police, who fired tear gas, and the arrest of more than a hundred people after shops were damaged and cars were set on fire.