US President Joe Biden has come under criticism for not addressing university protests against the situation in the Middle East. He spoke out on Thursday about the clashes and said "order must prevail."

Biden made the comments after hundreds of officers muscled their way through demonstrators at the University of California, Los Angeles, in the early hours of Thursday morning. They used stun grenades and dismantled an encampment that had been there for a week. More than 200 people were arrested.

Biden said peaceful protest is in the best tradition of how Americans respond to "consequential issues." He added that violent protest "is not protected" and that the rule of law must be upheld.

When asked by a reporter whether the protests have forced him to reconsider his policies on the Middle East, he said that they had not.

Former President Donald Trump has said the demonstrations are "all Biden's fault." On Wednesday, he called on college presidents to "remove the encampments, immediately vanquish the radicals and take back our campuses for all of the normal students who want a safe place from which to learn."

Trump also called the protestors "raging lunatics and Hamas sympathizers." He described the police raid at Columbia University earlier this week as "a beautiful thing to watch."