Some 240 people have been arrested, mostly in Amsterdam, after riots broke out in at least 10 cities across the Netherlands on Sunday evening.
Trouble first flared in Amsterdam and Eindhoven, where anti-coronavirus measure protestors turned up to demonstrate even though the gatherings had been banned.
As the 9pm curfew approached, gangs of youths began attacking police in several other cities, including Tilburg and Enschede, where youngsters threw stones at the local hospital. It was forced to call in extra security.
Tilburg mayor Theo Weterings said the rioting was ‘absolutely reprehensible’. ‘Shops which are already struggling were vandalised,’ he said. ‘Throwing stones and fireworks is outrageous’.
Although the protests were ostensibly to protest about the curfew and other coronavirus measures, commentators said many of those who showed up appeared to be young men out to cause trouble. ‘This is not demonstrating, I would call these people corona hooligans,’ Hubert Bruls, chairman of the regional safety board association told television chat show Op1.
Eindhoven mayor John Jorritsma van Eindhoven was more emotional. ‘If we carry on like this, we will be heading toward civil war,’ he told reporters.
Read more at DutchNews.nl: https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2021/01/dutch-police-arrest-around-200-in-a-night-of-rioting-nationwide/