Gaza college protests: FRANCE 24 reports from UCLA as clashes break out between rival protesters

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00:00 We're going to take you straight back to Los Angeles, in fact, to UCLA.

00:04 Our correspondent, Waseem Kournei, is there.

00:06 Waseem, bring us up to date with the latest, can you?

00:08 Yeah, I'm looking around me because things are, again, still very tense.

00:15 We are now in the fourth hour, so three hours and counting now

00:18 of these really violent protests, violent clashes between

00:23 these pro-Palestinian campers or protesters, rather,

00:27 you can see in the tents behind me and a group of pro-Israeli,

00:31 majoritarily, agitators who showed up here on campus

00:36 just after 11 o'clock in a coordinated way to try to attack

00:40 some of these tents and to try to dislodge some of these protesters.

00:44 And we've seen three hours of clashes with bits of wood

00:48 that have been thrown, traffic cones, fireworks also,

00:51 which is obviously a major fire hazard when you're throwing that at

00:54 tents in plastic or fabric.

00:57 And really, the main question here is why has police not shown up yet?

01:02 We talked about this last hour.

01:04 If I can turn around now, I think you might be able to see

01:07 there's a long row of police right there, about 50 officers.

01:11 But they arrived about 15 or 20 minutes ago,

01:13 but they're still not not acting in any way.

01:18 We've heard some very, very violent

01:23 slogans.

01:24 We heard some of these people screaming in megaphones saying,

01:27 you know, this is America.

01:29 This is not the land of terrorists.

01:31 Directing a lot of anger at some of those

01:33 pro-Palestinian protests.

01:35 Obviously, on the other hand, we've heard free, free Palestine.

01:38 You might be able to hear it behind me.

01:40 So again, a very, very tense night.

01:43 It appears really that this was maybe a deliberate decision

01:48 by the Los Angeles Police Department to let this play out,

01:51 because obviously whenever there have been camps that have been evacuated,

01:56 camps that have been evacuated across the country,

01:58 across these university campuses, across the United States,

02:00 you know, it's obviously never a good look because there's a possibility

02:04 of clashes, of resistance, of people being violently arrested.

02:08 So again, I think it is fair to speculate that maybe the Los Angeles

02:12 Police Department wanted to see how this plays out, whether,

02:15 you know, these agitators, as they're being described here,

02:19 you know, would be able to clear this camp out all by themselves.

02:23 Wesim, thanks very much.

02:25 Wesim Korni bringing us the latest there from the scene at UCLA.

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