The United Nations expressed "dismay" over the harsh measures taken by US security forces during attempts to disperse pro-Palestinian protests at American universities.

“I am disturbed that some law enforcement actions on a number of universities appear disproportionate,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said in a statement.

He added: "It must be clear that legitimate exercises of freedom of expression cannot be confused with incitement to violence and hatred."

The Commissioner believed that the authorities had taken a series of harsh measures to disperse and dismantle the demonstrations, stressing that freedom of expression and the right to peaceful assembly are fundamental.

Earlier on Tuesday, New York City police stormed the Columbia University campus and arrested dozens of students in solidarity with Palestine.

The storming operation began in the Manhattan area late yesterday evening, local time, and the police evacuated the demonstrators and journalists from the vicinity of Hamilton Hall, where students and professors are holding a sit-in at the university, to demand an end to the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip.

A New York Police spokesman said that forces evacuated the campus of protesters within 3 hours and arrested dozens.

NBC quoted the police as saying that about 100 people were arrested and the Hamilton Hall, which the protesters called “Hind Hall” in honor of a six-year-old Palestinian girl who was martyred in the ongoing Israeli war on Gaza, was evacuated.

While the evacuation process was underway, students chanted: “Free Palestine, free,” and “Shame, shame,” demanding the release of their detained colleagues.

The American police also violently dispersed a peaceful sit-in inside the University of San Francisco, as shown in videos posted on social media.

On April 18, students who rejected the Israeli war on Gaza began a sit-in on the campus of Columbia University in New York, demanding that its administration stop its academic cooperation with Israeli universities and withdraw its investments in companies that support the occupation of Palestinian territories.

With the intervention of police forces and the arrest of dozens of students, the state of anger expanded and the demonstrations extended to dozens of universities in the United States, including leading universities such as Harvard, George Washington, New York, Yale, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and North Carolina.

Later, the unprecedented student movement in the United States expanded to universities in countries such as France, Britain, Germany, Canada and India, all of which witnessed demonstrations in support of their counterparts in American universities and demands to stop the war on Gaza and boycott the companies that supply weapons to Israel.