Protesters detained as police head for Hamilton Hall, which students began occupying on Tuesday morning, and the main campsite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hundreds of New York City police officers have entered the campus of Columbia University taking dozens of people into custody in the latest escalation in the Gaza protests that have swept college campuses, mostly in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Live television images showed police entering the campus in upper Manhattan, which has been the focal point of student protests against Israel\u2019s war in Gaza, in which more than 34,535 Palestinians have been killed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After entering the site shortly after 9pm on Tuesday local time (01:00 GMT on Wednesday), some officers approached Hamilton Hall, the administration building that students began occupying early on Tuesday morning after the management said it had begun suspending students who had refused to meet a previous deadline to disperse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They had renamed the building \u201cHind\u2019s Hall\u201d, in memory of six-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab<\/u><\/a> who was killed in Gaza in February.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019re clearing it out,\u201d police in a riot unit yelled as they marched up to the barricaded entrance to the building, as dozens more officers marched to the protest encampment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine said in a post on X that the police officers were \u201cwearing riot gear\u201d and that \u201cmultiple blocks have been barricaded off\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A long line of police officers were seen climbing into the building via a ladder extended from the top of a truck into a second-storey window.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shortly afterwards, officers were seen leading protesters, their hands tied behind their backs with plastic zip ties, to police vehicles outside the campus gates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFree, free, free Palestine,\u201d chanted protesters outside the building. Others yelled \u201cLet the students go\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The move to clear the protest came exactly 56 years since police swept into Hamilton Hall to end a 1968 protest by students against racism and the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dozens of protesters barricaded the entrances of Hamilton Hall<\/u><\/a> after occupying the building on Tuesday. A student organiser who spoke to Al Jazeera said that the occupation group was separate from the group that had established a camp on the campus lawn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At an evening news briefing held a few hours before police entered the campus, New York Mayor Eric Adams and city police officials alleged the Hamilton Hall takeover had been instigated by \u201coutside agitators\u201d who lacked any affiliation with Columbia and were known to law enforcement for provoking lawlessness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Adams suggested some of the student protesters were not fully aware of \u201cexternal actors\u201d in their midst.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A spokesperson for Columbia University said police had been asked onto the campus at the \u201cuniversity\u2019s request\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAfter the university learned overnight that Hamilton Hall had been occupied, vandalised, and blockaded, we were left with no choice,\u201d the spokesperson said in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the student leaders of the protest, Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian student at Columbia\u2019s School of International and Public Affairs, disputed the claims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey\u2019re students,\u201d he told the Reuters news agency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n