Dutch police clashed with protesters against the coronavirus lockdown at the weekend, a day after rioters opposing the country's curfew burned down a coronavirus testing facility in a fishing village.
The rioters looted stores and set fires in several cities in Netherlands that resulted in the arrests of more than 240 people, authorities and Dutch media reported on Monday.
"The fire in a screening facility in Urk goes beyond all limits," Health Minister Hugo de Jonge said in remarks quoted by the Bangkok Post.
Police used tear gas, water cannon and dogs to disperse a demonstration in central Amsterdam as vehicles were torched, public property was destroyed and police were pelted with rocks, report said.
It was the worst violence in the country since the coronavirus pandemic broke out. Netherlands has been in lockdown since the middle of December that is set to continue at least until first week of February.
The protests in Amsterdam's Museum Square, which violated a restriction on social gatherings, took place the day after the government enforced a nightly curfew for the first time since World War II.
According to local authorities, more than 3,600 people were fined nationwide for violating the curfew that ran from 9 p.m. Saturday until 4:30 a.m. the following day. More than 25 people have been arrested for violating the curfew or for violence.
Demonstrators, led in part by bar and restaurant owners fed up with the government's lockdown measures, carried a banner with the words "Stop The Lockdown."
Around 13,541 have died in the Netherlands from the virus, with 944,000 getting infected. New virus cases in the country have generally been falling for a month, and dropped again on Sunday to 4,924 new cases.
The Netherlands was the last nation in the European Union to start large-scale immunizations and has so far inoculated a total of 77,000 doctors and nurses in a country with a population of 18 million.
