Euro 2016: England fans were attacked because rival PSG and Marseille gangs saw them as easy targets

England fans were attacked by French hooligans, as well as Russians, in Marseille at the weekend, when rival Paris Saint-Germain and Olympique Marseille gangs saw them as an easy target after gathering to fight each other.

The picture of what happened in the southern France city on Saturday afternoon remains extremely complicated but as the Independent revealed on Sunday, organised gang warfare between rivals Olympique Marseille and Paris Saint-Germain was a significant part of the picture. That fighting is understood to have been well under way before a group of 300 Russians launched their own attack on the English. It is now understood that former members of the Kop of Boulogne group, made up of PSG ultras, and various Marseille hooligans were the combatants and that the French had the English in their sights.

A Le Figaro correspondent reported on Monday that one young male – clearly French – cried “batard d’Anglais” (‘b***ard English’) and brought a chair crashing down on an English supporter, splitting the fan’s head and causing blood to seep over his England shirt. The English youth then refused help from French armed police, apparently because he feared arrest by them.

Some local police do not appear to have realised that French youths had battered the English before the Russians moved in. A member of the police service working in a unit devoted to counteracting hooliganism told Le Figaro that English fans had reacted to a sudden movement of the crowd on Saturday afternoon, caused by the inter-French fight, by throwing missiles indiscriminately – when that shift was nothing to do with them.

The officer said: “[Saturday] was part of a fight between supporters of Marseilles and ex Kop of Boulogne members. Then there was a movement of the crowd. The English didn’t understand. They thought they were being attacked and then began throwing anything that came to hand.”

Though the picture from Saturday is too complicated to know exactly when a group of 300 armed Russians arrived to carry out the worst of the violence, reports in France suggest that they were discreetly present throughout some of the French fighting and may have capitalised on the chaos. Local Marseilles youths, meanwhile, were aware enough of the danger at hand to escape through the same side streets where some of the worst English injuries were sustained.

One report quoted the owner of bar near the Marseille Opera describing a Russian hooligan literally jumping into a group of ten English. “Behind them, the Marseille [hooligans] fought before fleeing.” The French reports from Marseille describe English fans singing: “We are England, this city is ours” and “Please don’t take me home, I don’t wanna go to work, I want to stay here, Drink all your beer” before the fighting broke out.