Netherlands worst rioting in 40 years

The Netherlands hit by the third night of rioting on Monday with clashes in Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and The Hague, with over 184 people arrested by Tuesday morning as hundreds of rioters had looted shops, set fires, and clashed with police, who responded with water cannons. The riots followed after the Netherlands introduced a coronavirus curfew from 9 pm to 4:30 am to bring cases down.

In Rotterdam, 200 people threw rocks and fireworks at police officers then tried to set a police station on fire, with a water cannon deployed to stop them. In the city of Den Bosch, 40 miles to the east, police confronted violent crowds who set off fireworks, broke shop windows, looted a supermarket and an electronics store, and overturned cars. Trouble also flared in Amsterdam, the city of Amersfoort in the east, the small southern city of Geleen near Maastricht, and The Hague, according to police.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte condemned what he called the “criminal violence”, which police officials described as the “ worst rioting in 40 years”.

AstraZeneca whose jab has yet to be approved by EU regulators announced it was cutting vaccine supplies to the continent by up to 60 per cent because of problems with supply chains, thought to be due to underproduction at a factory in Belgium.