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French minister attacks 'Free Palestine' banner at PSG match

Interior minister Bruno Retailleau spoke out after fans at the Paris club unfurled the banner at a Champions League match in the French capital on Wednesday. 

La rédaction de Mediapart

This article is freely available.

A gigantic banner proclaiming "Free Palestine" unfurled by Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) supporters at a Champions League match has no place in a football stadium, France's interior minister said on Thursday, reports Yahoo! Sport.

The huge banner covered an entire section of the stadium at PSG's home venue of Parc des Princes in Paris Wednesday night ahead of their defeat at the hands of Spanish rivals Atletico Madrid.

As well as the slogan "Free Palestine", the banner showed a bloodstained Palestinian flag, a gesticulating man with a keffiyeh scarf covering all his face except his eyes, the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and a young boy wrapped in the Lebanese flag.

It was shown as Israel presses military operations against Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza and the militant Shiite group Hezbollah in Lebanon and international concern grows over civilian casualties.

"This banner had no place in this stadium," right-wing interior minister Bruno Retailleau wrote on X.

Read more of this AFP report published by Yahoo! Sport.