Fire across HK as activists use petrol bombs
Hong Kong
Hong Kong witnessed some of its most in intense clashes since anti-government protests began at the weekend, as a hardline faction of demonstrators took to the streets with petrol bombs.
Activists marched in the pouring rain through several neighbourhoods overnight Saturday, shouting ‘‘Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times’’, before lobbing Molotov cocktails and bricks at the city’s legislative building and police headquarters.
Police responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons that gushed water laced with blue dye to help identify the black-clad, masked protesters hiding behind umbrellas. Police later fired live rounds in an attempt to disperse demonstrators.
The rally was banned by authorities.
But the display of violence demonstrated how efforts to suppress the movement have largely had the opposite effect, instead galvanising activists.
As night fell, the demonstrators, squeezed by the city’s elite ‘‘Raptor’’ police unit, retreated and lit a makeshift road barrier on fire, wrapping brightly lit skyscrapers with billowing clouds of black smoke.
Yesterday’s clashes came on the fifth anniversary of Beijing’s decision to restrict democratic reforms in the territory, a move that outraged residents and touched off the 79-day Umbrella Movement in 2014.
Fire searing across city streets was a reminder that tensions are rising to a feverish pitch in the former British colony, which is facing its biggest political crisis since being returned to Beijing rule in 1997.