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Huge berry picker brawl sends six to hospital

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Huge berry picker brawl sends six to hospital

Two rival gangs of migrant berry pickers came to blows on a scrappy car park near Gävle in eastern Sweden on Wednesday, with Swedish police arresting three of the men after the violent dust-up.

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"It was clearly two gangs going at each other," witness Niklas Wall told the local Gefle Dagblad newspaper after he parked nearby and watched the melee.

At one point, a man wearing white clothes fell to the ground where he was accosted by four men in black. While one man kicked the fallen man, two others pummeled him with what looked like piping or some other kind of bat.

"The worst I saw was the poor sod who fell and didn't have a chance to defend himself," Wall said. "I almost considered trying to scatter them by driving my car at them."

The Swedish police were quick to arrive, however, with two officers approaching one group of men. From amateur video footage of the incident (embedded below), it looks like one officer dropped to his knees to illustrate to the men that they needed to stand down - which they immediately did.

"Bewteen 30 and 40 people were fighting with one another. Six people were injured and taken to hospital," Gävle police spokeswoman Åsa de Veen told the TT news agency.

According to Gefle Dagblad, police said they had drafted in interpreters to get to the bottom of the altercation.

The berry pickers have, according to local residents, lived in the area all summer.

TT/The Local/at

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