Dozens of people set fire to a tram in Amsterdam and police made five arrests. Authorities have not confirmed whether Monday’s incident is related to last week’s events.
Dozens of people armed with sticks and pyrotechnic devices set fire to a tram in Amsterdam on Monday, police said, as the city faces tensions following last week’s violence against fans of an Israeli soccer club.
Police said the fire was quickly extinguished and riot officers cleared the square. Images on social media showed people damaging property and launching fireworks, the Associated Press (AP) reported.
https://publish.twitter.com/?url=https://twitter.com/rose_ervin8117/status/1856111957620703306#
Police authorities did not provide further details about the disturbances or whether they were related to what happened last week, but they noted a tense atmosphere since five people were treated in hospital and dozens arrested on Thursday after the match between Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. .
HE The Dutch police announced five new arrests this Mondayfollowing the investigation into last week’s violence.
The detainees are men between 18 and 37 years old and come from Amsterdam or neighboring cities.
Four other men had already been arrested last week and remain in custody while the investigation continues. Two of them are minors, one 16 years old and another 17 years old from Amsterdam. The other two men are from Amsterdam and a nearby city.
The police said they had identified more than 170 witnesses and obtained dozens of pieces of evidence.
Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof on Monday described last week’s attacks as “anti-Semitic violence pure and simple.”
Between 20 and 30 Maccabi fans were injured during the night from Thursday to Friday, after being attacked by groups of individuals who, according to the Dutch police, responded to an anti-Jewish call launched on social networks.
Maccabi supporters burned a Palestinian flag in the central Dam Square and vandalized a taxi, Amsterdam’s police chief revealed on Friday.
The clashes occurred in a context of increasing anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli acts since the start of the war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, just over a year ago, in the Gaza Strip.
The Europa Football League match took place this Thursday in a generally calm atmosphere, although some Israeli fans did not observe the minute of silence in memory of the victims of the floods in Spain, a country that recently recognized the State of Palestine.
In a video posted on social media, the origin of which could not be verified, Maccabi fans apparently sang songs hostile to Palestinians in Hebrew.
On October 7 of last year, Israel declared a war in the Gaza Strip to “eradicate” Hamas, hours after it carried out an attack of unprecedented proportions on Israeli territory, killing some 1,200 people, most of them civilians.
Since 2007 in power in Gaza and classified as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel, the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) also took 251 hostages that day, 97 of whom remain in captivity, 34 of whom were declared dead. by the Israeli army that day.
The war continues to threaten to spread throughout the Middle East region, so far in the Gaza Strip 42,718 people have died (almost 2% of the population), including 17,000 minors, and 100,282 injured, in addition to more than 10,000 missing, most of them civilians, presumably buried in the rubble, according to updated figures from local authorities, which the UN considers reliable.
Source: Observadora
