The situation at UCLA Our correspondent Martha Kelner on scene.
Martha, we're hearing that tear gas or or pepper spray
being used in your vicinity.
What's going on? Are you OK?
Yeah, that's why I'm wearing this mask.
Just a short while ago
I went up to the perimeter
that you may be able to make out behind me.
The perimeter which is guarding what is a tent encampment
in the middle of the UCLA campus.
I went up there together with
my team and some substance was fired from within that
camp. I think it was probably
pepper spray, but it certainly was very aggravating for everyone's
chest.
I've just seen a a gentleman trying furiously to to
wipe whatever it was from his eyes as well.
So it is a tense situation here.
I'm now inside the police perimeter.
You can see here in the foreground
the California Highway Highway Patrol,
the
California's equivalent of state troopers,
and just beyond them lines of Los Angeles Police Department
officers. They are preparing potentially
to go in and try and bring an end
to this, these protests, to this encampment.
You can see them also just putting
their gas masks on. We know that throughout the night
pepper spray potentially even tear gas has been dispensed
inside the encampment and around the perimeter
of the encampment. So police officers here from various jurisdictions
just readying themselves potentially to go in and make arrests.
All of this began. These violent skirmishes
inside the UCLA campus began around 11:00 PM local time.
It took police about 2 1/2 hours to arrive here
on the scene,
some local people questioning why it took them so long
given
what we've seen on social media,
the videos of the violence breaking out here between the
pro Palestinian protesters
and counter protesters. So as I say the potential here
for for more violence, certainly there are people from both
sides
still in the vicinity of the area.
This encampment here has now been designated
illegal by the UCLA administrators
and I think that's what seems to have sparked what
we've seen here
this evening. But yet police here
just preparing potentially to go into this encampment,
potentially to make arrests. And you'd expect if they get
word of more violence from within that encampment
that they may hasten their actions
that you have obviously received pepper spray tear grass to
some degree.
Please do say if it.
If it's a struggle to to carry on,
we will, we will leave you there.
But I'm just aware as that camera's been panning round
we saw that other press photographer water being poured into
their eyes.
One assumes to try and deal with the the impact
of that spray,
whatever it was as you described behind you officers also
wearing very similar gas masks to the one that you
are.
Just remind us what's just happened in the last couple
of minutes for any viewers who are just joining us
here on Sky News.
Yeah, I'm wearing this gas mask.
I was just explaining because
we came behind the police perimeter
as press are allowed to do.
So we approached the tent encampment.
I don't know whether you can quite make it out,
but further down here there is
a barrier of, I mean woods,
metal fences. And beyond that there is an encampment of
tents,
which has been
here since Thursday, since Thursday last week.
So for almost a week there's been a tent encampment
on the center of campus.
I walked up towards where those tents are
and that is when some sort of substance,
I think probably pack a spray,
but potentially tear gas was dispensed from
inside that encampment or at least the immediate perimeter
of that encampment. And that's why I'm wearing this gas
mask.
That's why you saw the police officers there
also putting on their gas masks.
Should they have to go in and make arrests here?
You can also hear some
students. These are pro Palestine protesters,
and I say students. We do believe that there are
at least some people from the wider community supporting Palestine
here.
So it's not just students,
but you can hear them there.
I don't know whether you can make it out,
but they're they're chanting Free Palestine.
They're also chanting derogatory chants about the LA Police Department
as well.
It feels an increasingly heightened atmosphere there.
You move beyond those police lines,
closer to that encampment. And
it's worth noting that this isn't a situation that just
sprung up in the last few hours.
This has been bubbling away for for some days now.
Yeah, it has. In fact,
I was here the day that this encampment sprung up
on the main mourn at
UCLAI was there on Thursday,
and I saw the potential then that this had to
become a more volatile situation because there is a significant
number of cancer protesters who have been here
throughout the last few days.
I saw on Thursday one Jewish student having
an incredibly heated debate with a
woman who identified herself as a Palestinian
professor. They were having a a heated debate about a
conflict that's taking place more than
7000 miles away. But that mayhem in in the Middle
East,
certainly rippling in America's West.