Riot police were seen firing a chemical irritant to disperse student activists at a pro-Palestine encampment at the University of Virginia on Saturday.

Footage shows police shields and protective face coverings at the campus in Charlottesville while protesters chant slogans such as 'shame on you'.

According to local reports, 25 people were arrested after refusing to remove their tents from the campus as police designated the camp as an 'unlawful assembly'.

It comes after police moved on Wednesday and Thursday to clear pro-Palestinian protest camps in UCLA and Columbia. Hundreds of arrests were seen in both New York and Los Angeles.

US President Joe Biden broke his week-long silence over the pro-Palestine university campus protests, saying that 'order must prevail', during a short address in Washington DC on Thursday.

The campus protests at universities across the US are calling for the institutions to cut ties with Israel amid the ongoing Gaza war.

Fighting between Israel and Hamas has entered the seventh month in Gaza after Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on southern Israel on October 7, killing 1,139 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping over 200, according to Israeli officials.

Israel declared war on the group and a 'complete siege' of Gaza, with a large-scale campaign of air strikes. A ground incursion began at the end of the third week, with Israeli leaders vowing to 'wipe out' Hamas. Palestinian officials reported that more than 34,00 people had been killed and 77,000 injured at the time of publication.

The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) claimed that Hamas locations and infrastructure were targeted in the response. However, United Nations experts warned against 'collective punishment' for the people of Gaza, before predicting a 'humanitarian crisis' and then claimed that 'hell is settling in' for the region.