As tensions erupted over festivities in Amsterdam to commemorate the one-year anniversary of Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, police arrested a number of pro-Palestinian demonstrators on Monday.
As crowds gathered in the Dam central area to honor those killed a year ago, riot officers with shields and batons were deployed in force in the Dutch capital.
While the pro-Israeli group was listening to speeches and concerts, counterdemonstrators began to shout slogans. Police grabbed one middle-aged woman and hauled her into an armored van, an AFP journalist on the ground witnessed. Nearby, police surrounded several dozen pro-Palestinian demonstrators with faces covered and waving flags, to keep them separated from the Israeli gathering.
Police warned them to disperse but later announced they had arrested the group “for breaking the law on public gatherings.” French tourists Myriam Acef, 23, and Ines Khraroubu, 21, told AFP: “We were there right at the beginning, but we only stayed a bit because we quickly saw the police were surrounding everyone.”
“We were pushed around a bit with shields, and we were stuck for around 20-30 minutes,” Acef said. Prime Minister Dick Schoof and other top Dutch political leaders were attending commemorations in an Amsterdam synagogue to mark the October 7 attack.
The attackers took 251 people hostages into Gaza, where 97 are still being held, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead. Hours later, Israel launched a military offensive that has razed swathes of Gaza and displaced nearly all of its 2.4 million residents at least once amid an unrelenting humanitarian crisis.
According to data provided by the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, 41,909 Palestinians, the majority civilians, have been killed there since the start of the war. Those figures have been deemed reliable by the United Nations.
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