Some 1,000 French police officers to oversee Israel-Mali Olympic soccer match, with protests expected

PARIS, France — Around 1,000 French police officers will be on duty on Wednesday to protect Israel’s football match against Mali at the Paris Olympics where protests are expected, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin says.

The game involving the Israeli team at the Parc des Princes stadium in Paris, as well as the Ukraine-Iraq match in the southeastern city of Lyon, have been identified by French security forces as high risk.

“All the competitions have a security plan, but it’s true that these two matches, and particularly the match at the Parc des Princes, will have security, an anti-terror perimeter,” Darmanin tells BFM television and RMC radio.

“Tonight at the Parc des Princes there will be a thousand police officers who will ensure that we are there for the sport,” he adds.

All Israeli athletes at the Paris Games, which start officially on Friday, will have round-the-clock personal security provided by elite French police, both inside the Olympic Village and every time they leave the compound in northern Paris.

A French police source tells AFP that security forces were “expecting actions and disturbances around the stadium” on Wednesday and says it was possible that “people shout insults from the stands” or that there is “whistling and flags shown during the hymns, for example.”

The game kicks off 9 p.m. (1900 GMT).

Europalestine, a French activist group behind recent protests, tells the Guardian newspaper that it was planning a peaceful demonstration inside the stadium to protest the “genocide” in Gaza.

The head of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Thomas Bach and French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday rejected a Palestinian demand that Israel be barred from the Paris Games over the war in Gaza.