Universities – UCLA: The situation in the USA is in order

Police began early this morning to remove barricades erected by pro-Palestinian students at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in order to protest the Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip.

Anti-protest riot police removed fences and trees and rounded up scores of protesters, according to footage broadcast by CNN.

All classes at UCLA will be online only today and tomorrow, the university announced.

The situation at UCLA is settled

According to Reuters, live footage from the scene showed that starting early Wednesday, police began entering the UCLA campus next to a group of tents occupied by a crowd of protesters.

Local broadcaster KABC-TV estimated that 300 to 500 had barricaded themselves inside the camp, while about 2,000 more had gathered outside the barricades in a show of support.

But massed police remained for hours around the perimeter of the tents, before finally beginning to storm the camp at about 3.15am. to arrest squatters who refused to leave.

According to the news agency, the protesters, some of whom were holding makeshift shields and umbrellas, tried to block the advance of the police in sheer numbers, shouting “push them back” and flashing lights in the officers’ eyes.

The New York Times reported that police were “tearing down barricades on one side of the encampment outside UCLA’s Royce Hall.”