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A fierce fight between football hooligans caused chaos at Athens airport and it almost thwarted the departure of President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz, reports the Greek online edition iefimerida.gr.

The fight involved Serbian and Croatian fans, who had been in Greece during the last few days. According to the publication, last week Greek police received information that football fans from Serbia and Croatia would organize a mass fight between each other in Greece, in connection with the match between Olympiakos and Dinamo Zagreb.

On Monday, the Greek police forces launched an operation to prevent the fight. Policemen even raided the fan clubs of Panathinaikos and Olympiakos, with which the fans of Dinamo Zagreb and Red Star respectively are twinned.

The police found a large number of fans in different hotels in Athens, detained some of them in police stations and freed them after the end of last night's match, which was won by Olympiakos 2:1.

However, they failed to prevent the beating. Some of the Serbian football hooligans, who had arrived in Athens by plane, were due to return to Belgrade this afternoon. When they saw about 30 fans of Dinamo Zagreb at the airport, they immediately called other Serbian fans who were travelling by car and told them to go there.

Red Star fans laid an "ambush" for the Croats on the bridge outside the departure section of Athens airport. They attacked them with knives and iron knuckle-dusters and injured eight people, one of them being more seriously injured with a knife than the others. During the clash, the Greek police apprehended 36 football hooligans.

President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz, who was on a two-day visit to Greece yesterday and today, was at the airport at the time of the beating. His guards organized a special operational plan to safely transport him to the airport building.