| Police shoot dead a PSG after violence erupts in Israel
A policeman shot dead a Paris St Germain fan and seriously injured another late on Thursday following the French teams defeat by Hapoel Tel Aviv in the UEFA Cup, police sources said.
Early indications suggested the plainclothes policeman came to the rescue of a French supporter of the Israeli team who was attacked by PSG fans outside the stadium.
A group of up to 150 fans then turned on the policeman.
At first he let off a tear gas canister to try to disperse his assailants, then fired his gun, killing one man immediately and injuring another.
Sources said the PSG fans appeared to be far-right sympathisers and were chanting "France for the French" as they confronted the Hapoel supporter. The lone policeman was black.
The Paris prosecutors office, which has opened a formal investigation into the killing, said on Friday it was not yet possible to reconstruct exactly what had happened as witness accounts varied.
But it said initial indications suggested that the policeman had acted in legitimate defence after he was attacked, either on his own or while trying to protect a Tel Aviv supporter.
A journalist from weekly news magazine LExpress who said he witnessed the incident, said he saw a young black man in plain clothes apparently trying to protect someone from a menacing crowd before taking refuge in a nearby fast food restaurant.
In an account published on the LExpress website, the journalist, Philippe Broussard, said the crowd, which was shouting racist taunts and nationalist slogans such as "Red, White and Blue, France for the French!" was apparently initially unaware he was a policeman.
Broussard said he did not actually see the shooting
The explosion of violence came after PSG suffered a shock 4-2 loss to their Tel Aviv opponents. |