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Rotterdam Covid-19 protests: Injuries reported after Dutch police fired warning shots at anti-lockdown protesters


Rotterdam police said the protest on Coolsingel, one of the main thoroughfares in the city centre, “resulted in riots.” They said fires were started, fireworks were set off and officers were forced to fire warning shots to disperse the crowd.

“We fired warning shots and also had direct shots fired because the situation was life-threatening,” police spokeswoman Patricia Wessels told Reuters.

“We know that at least two people were injured, possibly as a result of the warning shots, but we need to further investigate the exact cause,” she said.

The protests were organized after the Netherlands re-imposed some containment measures last weekend for the first three weeks, in an attempt to slow the tide Coronavirus cases. The daily infection rate is at its highest since the start of the pandemic, as the country struggles to combat the wave of transmission that has swept through Central Europe.

Protesters voiced their objections to “corona round-trip tickets”, showing a person’s vaccination status and being asked to enter certain public places. This card is also issued to people who have not been vaccinated, but have proof of a negative test result.

But they were condemned by the mayor of Rotterdam, Ahmed Aboutaleb, who called the event “a riot”.

“The police were forced to pull out their weapons and even shoot directly,” he told a news conference on Saturday, Reuters reported. It was “a bout of violence, I can’t think of any other way to describe it,” he added.

The Rotterdam event is one of several anti-lockdown protests planned for the weekend, with police in Vienna, Copenhagen and Budapest getting ready for demonstrations. The Dutch capital Amsterdam is also expecting protests on Saturday afternoon.

Rotterdam police shut down public transport and asked people to go home on Friday as protests escalated.

Video posted on social media showed burned police cars and rioters hurling fireworks and rocks at police during a protest in Rotterdam on Friday.

In a statement on Twitter on Saturday, Rotterdam police said at least seven people were injured. They did not disclose the severity or nature of the injuries but noted that police officers were also injured.

According to police, at least 20 arrests have been made following the unrest.

The police statement said they had used “maximum police deployment necessary to restore public order”, and urged people to stay away from Coolsignel.

Police issued an emergency decree in Rotterdam, shutting down public transport and asking people to go home. Water cannons were deployed and police on horseback conducted crowd-dispersing missions, police said.

Authorities also urged eyewitnesses and those who recorded the riots to submit the footage to police for further investigation.

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