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Pro-Palestinian
demonstrators burn an Israeli flag
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JOHANNESBURG,
September 3 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – Naming Israelis
"child killers" and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
"a terrorist," hundreds of protesters gathered Monday,
September 2, outside the college in central Johannesburg where Israeli
Prime Minster Shimon Peres addressed the South African Zionist
Federation and the South African Board of Deputies, to show their
solidarity with the Palestinian cause.
Protestors
also marched to the Hillbrow police station, near downtown
Johannesburg, to demand the release of one of their group, Salim
Valli, who was arrested at the college campus where Peres spoke.
South
African riot police used water-cannon, stun grenades and rubber
bullets at the protesters and arrested 16 people in the protests, the
worst so far to hit the Earth Summit in Johannesburg.
"Yes,
we fired rubber bullets," a policeman told Agence France-Presse
(AFP) at the scene, and police could be seen throwing four stun
grenades.
"We
were sitting here in the road when the police fired a water-cannon and
then grenades and rubber bullets without giving us any warning,"
said Nasser Tayob, a lawyer.
Police
spokeswoman Henriette Bester later said 16 people were arrested under
the Gatherings Act and at least four protesters and three policemen
were injured in the fracas.
Riot
police repeatedly blasted the protesters with a water-cannon to force
them to disperse, but they responded by kneeling in the road outside
the college and praying, said AFP.
They
also burned several Israeli flags.
In
the crackdown on the demo, two television cameramen were injured, one
from Al-Jazeera television news who was bleeding from the head and
another from Associated Press who was bleeding from the mouth, AFP
added.
Director
Bester said a policeman was stabbed in the leg, and a middle-aged
woman was taken to hospital after she was injured by one of the water
jets.
At
the police station, at least on protester, a 14-year-old boy, was
treated for a leg wound, after having been hit by a rubber bullet.
The
summit witnessed earlier pro-Palestinian demonstrations and protests
in solidarity with Palestinian freedom.
