A British soccer fan has been shot and wounded in Kyrgyzstan after a local became upset with a group of supporters chanting in a bar.
The incident took place ahead of England’s World Cup qualifier away to neighboring Kazakhstan on Saturday. A British Foreign Office spokeswoman said that the attack took place in a bar in Bishek on Tuesday. “The British honorary consul is liaising with those involved and with the local authorities,” she said. Britain’s Sun newspaper reported on Thursday that the local in the bar told the England fan and his friends to stop chanting, and shot him in the thigh with a pistol when they continued. The wounded man is aged in his 30s and is from Rochdale in the north-western county of Lancashire, the paper said.
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Kyrgyzstan, with a population of more than 5 million people, is a landlocked nation bordered to the north by Kazakhstan. England will be seeking to maintain a 100 percent record in the European Group Six qualifier in Almaty, having won all five games so far to be five points ahead of second-placed Croatia.