Eyewitness videos showed people wielding sticks or poles to hammer on wooden boards being used as makeshift barricades to protect the pro-Palestinian protesters before police were called to the campus.
Mounting tensions on US campuses boiled over on Wednesday when pro-Israel supporters attacked an encampment of pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of California in Los Angeles hours after police arrested activists who occupied a building at Columbia University and flattened a tent city on its campus.
Undergraduate students out watching the extraordinary scene, many jeering at the police, fled into nearby buildings on the command of officers as police also cleared out a nearby protest encampment that had inspired similar protests at campuses across the country and abroad. The protests follow the October 7 attack on southern Israel by Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip and the ensuing Israeli offensive on the Palestinian enclave.
“Americans have the right to peacefully protest,” Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House spokesperson, told reporters. “Forcibly taking over a building is not peaceful.”Before the clashes in Los Angeles, UCLA officials declared that an encampment on its campus was unlawful, violated university policy and included people unaffiliated with the campus.
“The encampment would be a peaceful effort were it not for the continuous presence of counter-protesters and agitators,” he wrote in a text message. The atmosphere was calmer later on Wednesday. Hundreds of police officers were on campus and lining its perimeter. It was unclear how many arrests were made or the number of people injured.Columbia’s Shafik said she had asked police to stay on campus until at least May 17, two days after graduation, and the main campus, where student dorms are located, remained under lockdown on Wednesday.
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