Protesters in Baltimore pulled down a statue of Christopher Columbus and dumped it into the harbour Saturday. 

Video posted on Twitter showed a group using ropes to pull the statue from its pedestal in the city’s Little Italy neighbourhood as others cheered. It was then rolled to the city’s Inner Harbour and pushed into the water, The Baltimore Sun reported.

Attacks on statues of controversial figures, including Confederate generals and other leaders who owned slaves or who supported slavery or racist policies, is part of the fallout from anti-racism protests across the nation in the wake of the brutal arrest death of African America George Floyd in Minneapolis in May.

Donald Trump has become particularly incensed by statue destruction. He has compared the actions to the behaviour of fascists, and has vowed to vowed to punish those responsible.

A spokesman for democratic Baltimore mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young told the Sun that the action was part of a “re-examination taking place nationally and globally around some of these monuments and statues that may represent different things to different people.”

The Columbus statue, located near Baltimore’s Little Italy neighbourhood, was owned by the city and dedicated in 1984. There are two other statues of Columbus in the city.