Protesters storm Dutch streets over COVID curfew

Politicians and local leaders on Monday condemned rioters who clashed with police in about 10 towns and cities across the Netherlands a day earlier, on the second night of a coronavirus curfew.

"It is unacceptable," Prime Minister Mark Rutte said. "This has nothing to do with protesting, this is criminal violence and that's how we'll treat it." Worst hit was Eindhoven, where police clashed with hundreds of rioters who torched a car, threw rocks and fireworks at officers, smashed windows and looted a supermarket at the southern city's railway station.

"My city is crying, and so am I," Eindhoven Mayor John Jorritsma told media Sunday night. In an emotional impromptu press conference, he called the rioters "the scum of the earth" and added "I am afraid that if we continue down this path, we're on our way to civil war." The rioting coincided with the first weekend of the new national coronavirus 9 p.m. to 4:30 am curfew, but mayors stressed that the violence was not the work of citizens concerned about their civil liberties.

"These demonstrations are being hijacked by people who only want one thing and that is to riot," Hubert Bruls, mayor of the city of Nijmegen and leader of a group of local security organisations, told news talk show Op1 on Sunday night.