AMSTERDAM (Reuters) -Dutch police used a water cannon to disperse anti-migration protesters in the Hague who began throwing rocks and bottles at police officers, a spokesperson for the Hague local government said.
She added the protesters hit with the police water cannon had broken away from the main demonstration to block the highway.
The anti-immigration protest, held just over a month before the Dutch national elections, was organised by a right-wing activist who calls herself Els Rechts and campaigns against asylum seekers and for a fair housing policy in the Netherlands.
Local media reported that thousands of people joined the protest and that some of them had set a car on fire. The ANP press agency reported that protesters had attacked police cars.
Geert Wilders, who heads the far-right Party for Freedom in the Netherlands, had been invited to the protest by Els Rechts but did not attend, Els Rechts said in a post on social media platform X.
Wilders condemned the violence on X: “Blocking the highway and using force against the police is completely, utterly unacceptable.”
(Reporting by Charlotte Van Campenhout. Editing by Jane Merriman)
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