Since Friday morning a significant number of Serbian police, including gendarmerie, have been deployed around Belgrade's Arena, the venue of a Serbia-Croatia semifinal match of the European handball championships to be played later in the day. Security measures have been raised in the Serbian capital and on a motorway leading from the city to the Croatian border, following incidents in which Serbian hooligans attacked Croatian fans and damaged their cars earlier this week.
Several thousand police officers have been engaged to provide safety and security in the Arena hall and throughout the city.
Precautionary measures to prevent potential incidents include the separation of Croatian fans in the hall's stands and more frequent police patrols in the streets of Belgrade and along the motorway. A part of the parking lot of the sports hall is reserved only for cars with Croatian licence plates.
Local police officer Nikola Popovac was quoted by the Serbian national broadcaster as saying the police would also hold "preventive" interviews with leaders of Serbian fans' groups.
One Croatian fan was stabbed and two people sustained light head injuries in the gravest incident which happened in the northern town of Ruma earlier this week. Several Croatian cars were damaged or set on fire in Novi Sad, the capital of the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina which is hosting some of the matches of the 2012 EHF European Men's Handball Championship.
