The Dutch police have arrested more than 30 people during unrest in The Hague and other towns in the Netherlands that followed an “orgy of violence” the previous night at a protest against coronavirus restrictions .
The violence by groups of youths in The Hague and elsewhere on Saturday night wasn’t as serious as Friday night in Rotterdam, where police opened fire on rampaging rioters and arrested 51 people.
The police said on Sunday that they arrested 19 persons in The Hague and used a water cannon to extinguish a fire on a street.
Two soccer matches in the country’s top professional league were briefly halted when fans — banned from matches under a partial lockdown in force in the Netherlands for a week — broke into stadiums in the towns of Alkmaar and Almelo.
Injured officers
In The Hague, the police said five officers were injured as they tried to break up unrest by a group of youths who set at least two fires on streets and threw fireworks. The police said in a tweet that one rioter threw a rock at an ambulance carrying a patient to a hospital.
In the southern towns of Roermond and Stein, the police said they arrested 13 persons for setting fires and throwing fireworks, and in the fishing village of Urk, the police arrested eight persons for public order offenses, Dutch broadcaster NOS reported.
Earlier on Saturday, two protests against COVID-19 measures proceeded peacefully in Amsterdam and the southern city of Breda. Thousands of people marched through Amsterdam to protest COVID-19 restrictions.
Tens of thousands of protesters also took to the streets of Vienna on Saturday after the Austrian government announced a nationwide lockdown beginning Monday to contain skyrocketing coronavirus infections.
There were also demonstrations in Italy, Switzerland, Croatia and Northern Ireland.
The police in Rotterdam said that three rioters were hit by bullets and investigations were underway to establish if they were shot by police on Friday night.
The condition of the injured rioters wasn't disclosed.
