AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Dutch riot police ended a pro-Palestinian demonstration at an Amsterdam university early on Tuesday, bulldozing barricades and detaining some 125 people in sometimes violent clashes, authorities said.
In messages posted overnight on social media X, police said they had to act to stop the event and dismantle tents that been set up by protesters, who threw stones and fireworks.
Requests from the University of Amsterdam and the mayor for the protesters to leave the campus were ignored, the police said.
All but four demonstrators were later released. The four were being kept longer on charges of public violence and insulting an officer.
One officer suffered hearing damage, a police spokeswoman said, adding that it was still unclear how many other people may have been injured.
The University of Amsterdam declined to comment, but protesters had said they were demanding that the school break ties with Israel.
“The police’s input was necessary to restore order. We see the footage on social media. We understand that those images may appear as intense,” police said.
Outgoing Education minister Robbert Dijkgraaf said universities are a place for dialogue and debate and he was sad to see that police had to intervene.
Student protests over the war and academic ties with Israel have begun to spread across Europe but have remained much smaller in scale than those seen in the United States.
Last Friday, police in Paris entered France’s prestigious Sciences Po university and removed student activists who had occupied its buildings.
More than 100 students occupy the Ghent university, in Belgium, in both a climate and a Gaza protest that they want to prolong until Wednesday.
(Reporting by Bart Meijer and Benoit Van Overstraeten; Editing by Lincoln Feast, William Maclean)
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