New tensions in Netherlands over refugees

The Hague: New tensions have flared in the Netherlands over the sensitive issue of taking in migrants, only hours after Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte sharply condemned a "cowardly" attack on a refugee shelter.

Police were forced to intervene in the central city of Utrecht yesterday when hundreds joined a rally organised by the far-right German PEGIDA movement, short for "Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident".

Some 10 people were arrested after a smoke bomb was thrown and scuffles flared between PEGIDA supporters and those demonstrating against the group, Dutch media reported.

Tensions are rising in The Netherlands over the thousands of refugees due to be given shelter in the country under a European Union scheme.

Dutch police are also investigating a Friday night attack by men dressed in black and wearing balaclavas on a sports hall in the central city of Woerden where some 150 refugees, including 51 children, are temporarily housed.

No one was hurt in the incident, but police were yesterday still questioning 11 men aged between 19 and 30 who allegedly tried to storm the building, attacking it with fireworks and pelting it with eggs.

"This cowardly action is totally unacceptable," Prime Minister Rutte said on his Facebook page, after visiting the group on Saturday who he said had been very "shocked" by the incident.

Over the next two years, the Netherlands will take in more than 7,000 people as EU nations share out the migrants flooding into the continent, mainly from Syria and Iraq, in Europe's worst refugee crisis since World War II.

Last week, an angry crowd in the tiny village of Oranje tried to block the car of Deputy Justice Minister Klaas Dijkhoff after he revealed the small hamlet was having to house some 1,200 refugees, twice the number initially planned.

A woman was injured and hospitalised after she threw herself against Dijkhoff's car.

Rutte, who on Friday had already called for calm over the refugee situation, vowed after his visit to Woerden that those behind the attack would be severely dealt with.

Some local mayors have reacted angrily at the government plans for temporarily housing refugees in their villages, saying they were being "overruled" by the ministers based in The Hague.