Many people were killed in an Israeli attack on the Nuseirat camp in Gaza

2019 GMT – The US is tightening its control over university protests against Israel’s Gaza invasion

A half-dozen University of Pennsylvania students were among 19 pro-Palestinian protesters arrested while attempting to occupy a school building, university police said.

Their arrests came a week after authorities broke up a campus protest camp and arrested nine students – and at a time when other colleges across the country were either negotiating deals with students or calling police in their preparations for graduation ceremonies. to dismantle the protest camps.

Members of Penn Students Against the Occupation of Palestine announced the action Friday in the school’s Fisher-Bennett Hall, asking supporters to bring “flags, pots, pans, noisemakers, megaphones” and other items, according to the public affairs department University of Pennsylvania security said in a news release.

Officers could be seen closing in “within an hour,” The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. University police, backed by city police, then escorted the protesters out and secured the building, news outlets reported.

After clearing the building, police said they had seized “tools for opening locks and homemade metal shields from oil drums.”