LOS ANGELES (AP) — The University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) canceled classes Wednesday and urged people to avoid the area after violence broke out overnight between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli protesters.
The chaos prompted university officials to ask for assistance from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD).
LAPD wrote on X that they were requested due to "multiple acts of violence within the large encampment on campus" and were to "assist in restoring order."
The school's library won't reopen until Monday and Royce Hall, which authorities said was vandalized, is closed through Friday. UCLA stationed law enforcement officers throughout campus.
The clashes at UCLA erupted as counter-protesters tried to pull down parade barricades, plywood and wooden pallets protecting a tent encampment built by pro-Palestinian protesters. Video showed fireworks exploding over and in the encampment.
People threw chairs and other objects. A group piled on one person who lay on the ground, kicking and beating them with sticks until others rescued them from the scrum.
People outside the encampment, one draped in an Israeli flag, played recordings of a variety of sounds, including a baby crying and sirens.
Authorities have not detailed injuries.
“Horrific acts of violence occurred at the encampment tonight and we immediately called law enforcement for mutual aid support,” Mary Osako, a senior UCLA official, told the campus newspaper the Daily Bruin.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass spoke to the university’s chancellor and said police would respond to the school’s request, according to a post on social media platform X from her spokesperson Zach Seidl.
Bass called the violence on campus "absolutely abhorrent and inexcusable."
Security was tightened Tuesday at the campus after officials said there were “physical altercations” between factions of protesters.
Police cleared 30 to 40 people from inside Columbia University's Hamilton Hall late Tuesday after pro-Palestinian protestorsoccupied the administration building in New York earlier in the day.
NYPD officers acted after the school’s president said there was no other way to ensure safety and restore order on campus and sought help from the department. The occupied building had expanded the demonstrators' reach from an encampment elsewhere on the Ivy League school's grounds.
Law enforcement will be there through May 17, the end of the university’s commencement events.
Police have swept through other campuses across the U.S. over the last two weeks, leading to confrontations and more than 1,000 arrests. In rarer instances, university officials and protest leaders struck agreements to restrict the disruption to campus life and upcoming commencement ceremonies.
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