Update: Israeli Ethiopian protesters clash with police in Tel Aviv, dozens injured

Dozens of people were injured when Israeli Ethiopian protesters clashed with police in anti-racism rallies late Sunday in the central Israeli city of Tel Aviv.

Thousands of Israeli Ethiopians and their supporters demonstrated in various sites in the Israeli financial capital Sunday, in protest of police brutality and racism. They blocked major roads, including part of a highway, causing huge traffic jams in central Israel during rush hour.

Joined by hundreds of social activists, protesters chanted "violent policemen must be put in jail" and "we demand equal rights."

After sunset, demonstrators marched to the Rabin Square in central Tel Aviv, where the city hall is located, and the protest turned violent.

According to police spokesperson Micky Rosenfeld, protesters hurled bottles, metal objects and stones at policemen, who tried to disperse them using stun grenades and water cannons.

He told Xinhua that around 3,000 people took part in the demonstrations and hundreds of policemen were deployed.

Gabi Laski, a prominent human rights lawyer from Tel Aviv, said that police used sponge-tipped bullets, tear gas, stun grenades and water cannons to disperse the protesters, in the first time ever such measures were used against protesters in Tel Aviv.

Zaki Heler, a spokesperson for Israel's rescue services, told Xinhua that by 11:15 pm (0815 pm GMT) around 41 people had been injured, mostly policemen.

The Ethiopian community was enraged last week as a footage surfaced, showing two policemen in Holon, south of Tel Aviv, assaulting an Israeli soldier of Ethiopian descent without any apparent provocation.

A day later, a municipal inspector beat a young Ethiopian man who lives in southern Tel Aviv after apparently mistaken him to be an Eritrean illegal immigrant.

Sunday's protest followed a rally of some 1,000 people in central Jerusalem Thursday night, in which 15 people, including three policemen, were injured in clashes.

In an attempt to calm tensions, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement Sunday evening, saying he will meet Monday with representatives of the community, as well as the beaten soldier.

He later met with Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovich and urged calm and a return to order.

He promised that "all claims will be looked into but there is no place for violence and such disturbances."

On Thursday night, Netanyahu promised that the government will take steps to ease Ethiopian Jews' integration into the Israeli society.

Jews from Ethiopia arrived in Israel in two waves of immigration in 1984 and 1991. The community, which includes some 125,500 people, has struggled to integrate into the Israeli society with little success. There have been complaints of discrimination in education and housing. Endit