Dutch riot police clashed with protesters at the University of Amsterdam on Wednesday, while scores of demonstrators at U.S. colleges were arrested overnight as the student-led protests against Israel's war in Gaza roiled more campuses on both sides of the Atlantic.
In Amsterdam, protesters atop makeshift barriers of desks, bricks and wooden pallets used fire extinguishers to push back police, local television showed. Reuters video showed officers in riot gear struck protesters on the head with batons and knocked down the barricades, dragging many young students away as hundreds of others shouted "Shame on you!"
The confrontation underscored mounting tensions at European campuses, after weeks of unrest at dozens of U.S. universities as students call for a ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza conflict.
At George Washington University in Washington, D.C., police took down tents, deployed pepper spray and cleared demonstrators from campus and the surrounding streets, a few blocks away from the White House.
Thirty-three people were arrested, police said. Metropolitan Police Chief Pamela Smith said at a news conference that authorities had seen "an escalation in the volatility of the protests" in recent days, prompting police and the university to make the decision to remove the encampment.
Smith and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser had been scheduled to testify to Congress later on Wednesday about why they had previously declined to clear the encampment, but the hearing was cancelled after the raid.
At the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, police arrested more than 130 people and removed an encampment after the school's chancellor, Javier Reyes, said he had summoned police "as a last resort."
Source: Reuters
