Northern Ireland’s police have arrested four pro-Palestine protesters taking part in a rally against former US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s visit to Queen’s University Belfast over her stance on Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.

“Four students have been arrested by the aggressive” Police Service of Northern Ireland, QUB Palestine Assembly, which organized the protests, said on social media platform X on Thursday

The group also published videos showing police forces attacking people who were protesting peacefully on Thursday.

The police forces “dragged, pushed, and choked protesters, wielding their batons with no advance warning,” QUB Palestine Assembly said.

Police confirmed four people were arrested on suspicion of a range of “public order offences.”

“The men were arrested on suspicion of numerous offences and remain in police custody at this time,” a PSNI spokesperson said.

The arrests took place as hundreds of protesters staged a rally outside Queen’s University Belfast on Thursday to protest against Clinton’s address at the three-day Global Innovation Summit and a scheduled presentation by US envoy to Northern Ireland, Joe Kennedy.

The QUB Palestine Assembly hit out at the university for inviting the two which it has described as “war criminals.”

“Clinton has been a consistent apologist for the genocide being carried out against Palestinians in Gaza, and Kennedy represents an administration that has overseen the supply of the bombs and munitions that have taken upwards of 160,00 Palestinians lives,” it said in a statement on Thursday.

Clinton had to be whisked away from the university as clashes escalated at the gates of the campus, while Kennedy was also forced to cancel a planned engagement at the Mandela Hall at Queen’s Students Union, opposite the university.

In March, a group of 260 Queen’s staff, alumni and students wrote a letter “registering profound concern” over the former first lady’s role as chancellor.

In a post on X, the QUB Palestine Assembly stressed that students had protested against the university’s “complicity in genocide, failure to condemn genocide” and support for Clinton “without ANY violence or arrests for the past year.”

Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas waged the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in response to the Israeli regime’s decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.

The regime’s bloody onslaught on Gaza has so far killed at least 43,736 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured more than 103,370 others. Thousands more are also missing and presumed dead under rubble.