AMSTERDAM – Dutch police arrested more than 150 people in a third night of unrest in cities in the Netherlands, where rebel groups set fire, threw stones and looted shops in the violence triggered by a night curfew aimed at containing the coronavirus.
The country’s first curfew since World War II followed a warning from the National Institute for Health (RIVM) about a new wave of infections due to the “British variant” of the virus, and was imposed despite weeks of decline in new infections.
Ten police officers were injured in the port city of Rotterdam, where 60 protesters were detained overnight, the Dutch news agency ANP said on Tuesday.
Two photographers were injured after being targeted by rock throwing gangs, one in the capital, Amsterdam, and another in the neighboring city of Haarlem, NH Nieuws said.
In the east of the capital, at least nine people were arrested after clashes with riot police. Store windows were smashed and a furious group attacked a police van, witnesses said.
The unrest in towns and cities across the Netherlands initially grew out of calls to protest the country’s hard blockade, but it degenerated into vandalism by crowds agitated by messages circulating on social media.
Non-essential schools and shops have been closed since mid-December, after bars and restaurants were closed two months earlier.
“Unfortunately, we are seeing the same things as last night,” police chief Willem Woelders told Dutch program Nieuwsuur. He said about 70 protesters were arrested and the police used tear gas in the city of Haarlem, as well as in Rotterdam.
Rotterdam police said the youth took to the streets “looking for a confrontation with the police”. Riot officials tried to stop the violence and made several arrests before firing tear gas. The police warned people to stay away from the area. The national broadcaster NOS showed a video of the police using a water cannon and reported that some stores were looted.
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Police in the southern city of Den Bosch said a store had been looted there and the riot police were trying to restore order.
Late Monday night, police in Rotterdam were left to sweep broken glass across the street beside a vandalized bus stop. The force tweeted that “calm is slowly returning, but the atmosphere is still bleak.”
In the southern city of Geleen, police tweeted that young people in the city center were playing fireworks. The riot police accused demonstrators in The Hague.
Dutch media reported social media calls for more violent protests, even as the country struggles to contain new coronavirus infections, hospitalizations and deaths.
Police in the city of Goes and in the province of North Holland said they had arrested people on suspicion of using social media to call for protests.
“It is unacceptable,” Prime Minister Mark Rutte said on Monday of Sunday’s riots. “This has nothing to do with protest, this is criminal violence and that is how we are going to treat it.”
The worst target on Sunday was the southern city of Eindhoven, where police clashed with hundreds of protesters who set fire to a car, threw stones and fireworks at police officers, smashed windows and ransacked a supermarket at their train station.
“My city is crying, and so am I,” Eindhoven Mayor John Jorritsma told reporters on Sunday night at an impromptu and emotional press conference. He called the protesters “the scum of the earth” and added: “I fear that if we continue on this path, we will be on the way to civil war”.
Amsterdam police arrested 190 people amid protests at a banned demonstration on Sunday.
The death toll in the Netherlands is 13,579, with 952,950 infections to date.