PARIS: Police entered Paris’ Sciences Po university on Friday to remove dozens of students staging a pro-Gaza sit-in in the entrance hall, AFP journalists saw, as protests fire political debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
One student told reporters “around 50 students were still inside the rue Saint-Guillaume site” when police entered.
Bastien, 22, told AFP he and other protesters had been peacefully brought out in groups of 10 by officers.
Another, Lucas, studying for a master’s degree, said “some students were dragged and others gripped by the head or shoulders.”
Administrators had closed Sciences Po’s main buildings on Friday in response to the sit-in and called for remote classes instead.
They said “around 70 to 80 people” were occupying the foyer of the central Paris building.
Prime Minister Gabriel Attal’s office said such protests would be dealt with using “total rigour,” adding that 23 university sites had been “evacuated” on Thursday.
Students from the university’s Palestine Committee had earlier told reporters they faced a “disproportionate” response from police, who had blocked access to the site before moving in.
They also complained of a lack of “medical assistance” for seven students who had started a hunger strike “in solidarity with Palestinian victims.”
Widespread protests
Sciences Po, widely considered France’s top political science school, with alumni including President Emmanuel Macron, has seen student action at its at sites across the country in protest against the war in Gaza and the ensuing humanitarian crisis.
Protests have been slow to spread to other prominent universities, unlike in the United States — where demonstrations at around 40 facilities have at times spiralled into clashes with police and mass arrests.
But demonstrations have so far been more peaceful in France, home to the largest Jewish population outside Israel and the US, and to Europe’s largest Muslim community.
The University of California, Los Angeles, announced that Friday’s classes would be held remotely after police cleared a protest camp there and arrested more than 200 people.
Sciences Po administration took the same step for its Paris student body of between 5,000 and 6,000.
Protesters occupied the entrance hall in a “peaceful sit-in” following a debate on the Middle East with administrators on Thursday morning that their Palestine Committee dubbed “disappointing.”
The university’s interim administrator, Jean Basseres, refused student demands to “investigate” Science Po’s ties with Israeli institutions.
War on Gaza
The war in Gaza began after Palestinian militant group Hamas launched an attack on Israel on October 7 that resulted in the deaths of 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel estimates that 129 hostages seized by militants during their attack remain in Gaza. The Israeli military says it believes 34 of them are dead.
Israel’s relentless retaliatory offensive on Gaza has killed at least 34,596 people in the Palestinian territory, mostly women and children, according to the besieged enclave’s Hamas-run health ministry.
Outside the Sorbonne University, a few hundred meters (yards) from Sciences Po in central Paris, members of the Union of Jewish Students in France (UEJF) were setting up a “dialogue table” on Friday.
“We want to prove that it’s not true that you can’t talk about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” UEJF president Samuel Lejoyeux told broadcaster Radio J.
“To do that, we have to sideline those who single out Jewish students as complicit in genocide,” he added.
In the northeastern city of Lille, the ESJ journalism school was blocked off, an AFP reporter saw.
Students at the city’s nearby branch of Sciences Po had their identities checked before they were allowed in via a back entrance to sit exams.
Around 100 students had occupied a lecture hall at Science Po’s Lyon branch late on Thursday, while a blockade at a university site in nearby Saint-Etienne was cleared on Thursday morning by police.

WASHINGTON: Russian military personnel have entered an air base in Niger that is hosting US troops, a senior US defense official told Reuters, a move that follows a decision by Niger’s junta to expel US forces.
The military officers ruling the West African nation have told the US to withdraw its nearly 1,000 military personnel from the country, which until a coup last year had been a key partner for Washington’s fight against insurgents who have killed thousands of people and displaced millions more.
A senior US defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Russian forces were not mingling with US troops but were using a separate hangar at Airbase 101, which is next to Diori Hamani International Airport in Niamey, Niger’s capital.
The move by Russia’s military, which Reuters was the first to report, puts US and Russian troops in close proximity at a time when the nations’ military and diplomatic rivalry is increasingly acrimonious over the conflict in Ukraine.
It also raises questions about the fate of US installations in the country following a withdrawal.
“(The situation) is not great but in the short-term manageable,” the official said.
Asked about the Reuters report, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin played down any risk to American troops or the chance that Russian troops might get close to US military hardware.
“The Russians are in a separate compound and don’t have access to US forces or access to our equipment,” Austin told a press conference in Honolulu.
“I’m always focused on the safety and protection of our troops ... But right now, I don’t see a significant issue here in terms of our force protection.”
The Nigerien and Russian embassies in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The US and its allies have been forced to move troops out of a number of African countries following coups that brought to power groups eager to distance themselves from Western governments. In addition to the impending departure from Niger, US troops have also left Chad in recent days, while French forces have been kicked out of Mali and Burkina Faso.
At the same time, Russia is seeking to strengthen relations with African nations, pitching Moscow as a friendly country with no colonial baggage in the continent.
Mali, for example, has in recent years become one of Russia’s closest African allies, with the Wagner Group mercenary force deploying there to fight jihadist insurgents.
Russia has described relations with the United States as “below zero” because of US military and financial aid for Ukraine in its effort to defend against invading Russian forces.
The US official said Nigerien authorities had told President Joe Biden’s administration that about 60 Russian military personnel would be in Niger, but the official could not verify that number.
After the coup, the US military moved some of its forces in Niger from Airbase 101 to Airbase 201 in the city of Agadez. It was not immediately clear what US military equipment remained at Airbase 101.
The United States built Airbase 201 in central Niger at a cost of more than $100 million. Since 2018 it has been used to target Islamic State and Al-Qaeda affiliate Jama’at Nusrat Al-Islam wal Muslimeen (JNIM) fighters with armed drones.
Washington is concerned about Islamic militants in the Sahel region, who may be able to expand without the presence of US forces and intelligence capabilities.
Niger’s move to ask for the removal of US troops came after a meeting in Niamey in mid-March, when senior US officials raised concerns including the expected arrival of Russia forces and reports of Iran seeking raw materials in the country, including uranium.
While the US message to Nigerien officials was not an ultimatum, the official said, it was made clear US forces could not be on a base with Russian forces.
“They did not take that well,” the official said.
A two-star US general has been sent to Niger to try and arrange a professional and responsible withdrawal.
While no decisions have been taken on the future of US troops in Niger, the official said the plan was for them to return to US Africa Command’s home bases, located in Germany.