Geneva: Swiss police moved in early Tuesday to remove some 50 pro-Palestinian student protesters holed up in a Geneva university building for nearly a week, media reports said.
About 20 officers entered the UniMail building around 0300 GMT, a journalist from the Keystone-ATS news agency said.
“Most of the students were sleeping. After being gathered they were led to the underground parking garage,” Julie Zaugg, a journalist with LemanbleuTV channel, said on X.
She said they shouted pro-Palestinian slogans before being handcuffed and taken away in vans.
Geneva university officials had asked the protesters on Monday to vacate the premises and protest in a different manner.
Students demonstrations have gathered pace across Western Europe in recent weeks with protesters demanding an end to the Gaza bloodshed and to cut ties with Israel, taking their cue from demonstrations that have swept US campuses.
There have been similar protests in other Swiss universities and polytechnic schools including Lausanne, Berne, Basel and Zurich.
The bloodiest ever Gaza war began with Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Militants also seized hostages, of whom Israel estimates 128 remain in Gaza, including 36 the military says are dead.
Israel’s bombardment and offensive in Gaza have killed at least 35,091 people, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
Pro-Palestinian protesters cleared from Geneva university
Pro-Palestinian protesters cleared from Geneva university
- Geneva university officials had asked the protesters on Monday to vacate the premises and protest in a different manner.
Afghanistan says working with Tajikistan to investigate deadly border clash
- Tajikistan shares a mountainous border of about 1,350 kilometers (839 miles) with Afghanistan and has had tense relations with Kabul’s Taliban authorities, who returned to power in 2021
KABUL: Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities said Saturday they were working with neighboring Tajikistan to investigate a border clash earlier this week that killed five people, including two Tajik guards.
Tajikistan announced on Thursday that three members of a “terrorist” group had crossed into the Central Asian country “illegally” at Khatlon province, which borders Afghanistan.
Tajik security forces killed the trio, but two border guards also died in the clash, the Tajik national security committee said.
Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi said on Saturday that “we have started serious investigations into” the recent “incidents” on Tajik soil.
“I spoke to the foreign minister of Tajikistan and we are working together to prevent such incidents,” he told an event in Kabul.
“We are worried that some malicious circles want to destroy the relations between two neighboring countries,” the minister added, without elaborating.
Tajikistan shares a mountainous border of about 1,350 kilometers (839 miles) with Afghanistan and has had tense relations with Kabul’s Taliban authorities, who returned to power in 2021.
Unlike other Central Asian leaders, Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon, who has been in power since 1992, has criticized the Taliban and urged them to respect the rights of ethnic Tajiks in Afghanistan.
At least five Chinese nationals were killed and several wounded in two separate attacks along the border with Afghanistan in late November and early December, according to Tajik authorities.
According to a UN report in December, the jihadist group Jamaat Ansarullah “has fighters spread across different regions of Afghanistan” with a primary goal “to destabilize the situation in Tajikistan.”
Dushanbe is also concerned about the presence in Afghanistan of members of the terrorist organization Daesh in Khorasan.
