Greek fan has been killed and five others injured in an arranged hooligan showdown on the sidelines of a Greek women's volleyball match outside Athens, police sources said.
The fight between around 300 fans of Greek arch-rivals Olympiakos Piraeus and Panathinaikos Athens broke out in Peania, 27 kilometres east of the capital.
The rival hooligan groups had apparently arranged to meet for the clash, the police source said.
The hooligans clashed with bottles, knives and screwdrivers on the parking lot of a toy store some distance from the volleyball stadium, and the fighting spilled out onto the neighbouring highway, paralysing traffic.
The dead fan was rushed to an Athens hospital with serious head injuries, a hospital official said. The cause of death is still unclear, as he also carried stab wounds.
Police detained 18 people, including the driver of a car that drove into a throng of fans when they attacked his vehicle.
Two cars on the highway were assaulted and damaged.
"They nearly cracked my head open," a driver told NET state television. "If the police had taken longer to intervene they would have burned us alive."
Three stores in the vicinity were also damaged, the Athens News Agency (ANA) reported.
Fan violence routinely mars Greek sport, usually centred around football and basketball, but occasionally affecting other sports such as water polo and volleyball.
Successive Greek governments have spent years trying to combat the problem, stiffening laws, introducing personalised tickets and promoting an initiative to install surveillance cameras inside stadiums.
But success has been limited.
Last weekend, Greek fans managed to sneak flares into a high-risk football match against neighbouring rivals Turkey, a qualifying game for the 2008 European Championships that the authorities had pledged to monitor closely.
Several of the flares were fired onto the pitch, and the Turkish players were targeted with plastic bottles during the entire game.
A brawl also broke out in one of the stands, apparently over far-right slogans chanted by one group of Greek fans.
Το άρθρο είναι αφιερωμένο σε αυτούς που στηρίζουν εξωαγωνιστικά τις ομάδες Βόλεϊ ΠΑΟΤΕ
The fight between around 300 fans of Greek arch-rivals Olympiakos Piraeus and Panathinaikos Athens broke out in Peania, 27 kilometres east of the capital.
The rival hooligan groups had apparently arranged to meet for the clash, the police source said.
The hooligans clashed with bottles, knives and screwdrivers on the parking lot of a toy store some distance from the volleyball stadium, and the fighting spilled out onto the neighbouring highway, paralysing traffic.
The dead fan was rushed to an Athens hospital with serious head injuries, a hospital official said. The cause of death is still unclear, as he also carried stab wounds.
Police detained 18 people, including the driver of a car that drove into a throng of fans when they attacked his vehicle.
Two cars on the highway were assaulted and damaged.
"They nearly cracked my head open," a driver told NET state television. "If the police had taken longer to intervene they would have burned us alive."
Three stores in the vicinity were also damaged, the Athens News Agency (ANA) reported.
Fan violence routinely mars Greek sport, usually centred around football and basketball, but occasionally affecting other sports such as water polo and volleyball.
Successive Greek governments have spent years trying to combat the problem, stiffening laws, introducing personalised tickets and promoting an initiative to install surveillance cameras inside stadiums.
But success has been limited.
Last weekend, Greek fans managed to sneak flares into a high-risk football match against neighbouring rivals Turkey, a qualifying game for the 2008 European Championships that the authorities had pledged to monitor closely.
Several of the flares were fired onto the pitch, and the Turkish players were targeted with plastic bottles during the entire game.
A brawl also broke out in one of the stands, apparently over far-right slogans chanted by one group of Greek fans.
Το άρθρο είναι αφιερωμένο σε αυτούς που στηρίζουν εξωαγωνιστικά τις ομάδες Βόλεϊ ΠΑΟΤΕ
