Melbourne, Australia
Serbs and Croats battled in the streets outside the Australian Open stadium this week. The Croats had come to cheer on tennis player Mario Ancic, while the Serbs were rooting for Jelena Jankovic. The two contingents of fans traded insults and then began throwing punches and bashing one another with their national flags. The Serbs chanted, “Die, Croats, die!” in Serbo-Croatian. Police hauled away about 150 people. Officials said the blistering heat—more than 100 degrees—might have made fans crankier than usual. Serbia and Croatia fought a four-year war marked by vicious ethnic cleansing during the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
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