French police remove pro-Palestinian students occupying a hall at Sorbonne University

On Tuesday, French police intervened at the Sorbonne University to put an end to the occupation of a teaching hall by activists supporting Palestinians at the prestigious Parisian university, in a move that reflects the messages of firmness launched by the government just one day before.

Less than 24 hours after Prime Minister Gabriel Attal pledged that there would "never be a right to disrupt" French universities, a police force entered the university campus to evacuate demonstrators supporting Palestinians who had occupied a teaching hall for two hours in "solidarity" with Gaza, according to a journalist at Agence France-Presse.

The activists, numbering about a hundred, who occupied the hall were removed one by one by the police to a nearby street from the university, and its members often had to forcibly carry and remove the protesters outside.

The police announced that they arrested a total of 39 people during the evacuation of the hall.

While the police were clearing the protesters from the teaching hall, dozens of supporters of the Palestinian cause gathered near the security cordon imposed by the police around the university chanting slogans of "Palestine will live, Palestine will prevail."

During their occupation of the university hall on Tuesday, the protesters chanted "Rafah, Rafah, we are with you," in a move aimed at "pressuring" governments to prevent the Israeli army from invading the city located in the far south of the Gaza Strip.

AFP