Police battle pro-Palestine protesters in Amsterdam

Violent clashes broke out last night as police battled with pro-Palestine protesters in Amsterdam as university students continued their demonstration for the second day running. 

Police officers ended a blockade on university grounds with hundreds of activists being moved onto a nearby square to continue protesting into the night demanding a ceasefire in Gaza.

Protesters called for the university to sever all academic ties with Israel while others demanded universities cut all financial ties with companies they say are profiting from the oppression of Palestinians.

Demonstrators battling against police officers made makeshift barriers of desks, bricks and wooden pallets, using fire extinguishers to push back on cops, local television showed.

Footage, seen by Reuters, showed an officer in riot gear striking protesters on the head with batons and knocking down barricades.

Violent clashes broke out last night as police battled with pro-Palestine protesters in Amsterdam as university students carried out their demonstration for the second day running.

Some students were dragged away from the demonstration while hundreds of others shouted ‘shame on you’

Police officers ended a blockade on university grounds with hundreds of activists being moved onto a nearby square to continue protesting into the nigh

Some students were dragged away from the demonstration while hundreds of others shouted ‘shame on you’.

It is the latest demonstration to take over university cities in recent days on both sides of the Atlantic.

In the United States scores of college students were arrested overnight following protests against Israel’s war against Hamas.

At George Washington University in Washington D.C. police were seen tearing down tents and deploying pepper spray to clear demonstrators from the campus and streets – just a short walk away from the White House. 

Elsewhere in Europe police were forced to disperse protesters who gathered at the Swiss University of Zurich. They also cleared students demonstrating from the courtyard of the Freie Universitaet Berlin.

Last week, police took similar action at the at the Sorbonne University in Paris, while on Wednesday the Brussels University said it would file a police complaint against students who were allegedly involved in a violent protest, including an assault on the Jewish students union leader.

The scenes across wider Europe and the Atlantic echo protests that have been seen on UK campuses in recent days.

Earlier this week violence broke out at the University of Leeds where a clash between security guards and students took place.

Oxbridge students also set up encampments in front of their prestigious universities in solidarity with Gaza.

Police take security measures as pro-Palestinian protesters gather in University of Amsterdam to stage demonstration on the city’s streets to call for their institution to end all ties with Israel

MANCHESTER: A protester gives a ‘peace’ sign at an encampment set up at Brunswick Park

NEWCASTLE: Students say their protest ‘highlights the institution’s investment strategy and its complicity in the Israeli military’s war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank’

OXFORD: Students put up a sign listing their six demands at their ‘Liberated Zone’ camp

CAMBRIDGE: Students set up an encampment in solidarity with Gaza this morning 

The sit-in protests, which echo protests seen in the US, have sprung up at other British universities including Manchester, Leeds, Bristol, Sheffield and Newcastle over the last week. 

At Oxford’s camp, named the ‘liberated zone’, students pinned up a board of six demands including calls to boycott Israeli genocide, stop banking with Barclays and help rebuild Gaza’s education system.

Cambridge for Palestine said it will ‘not move’ from the encampment until the university agrees to four demands including disclosing financial ties with complicit organisations and protecting students at risk.

Yet not all campus protests have ended in confrontation. Ireland’s Trinity College Dublin announced on Wednesday that an encampment and blockade on campus would end peacefully after students and administrators negotiated a settlement.