Scuffles at protest sites in Hong Kong

BEIJING/HONG KONG: A mob of masked men opposed to Hong Kong’s pro-democracy demonstrators led an apparently coordinated assault on the protest zone in the heart of the city’s financial district Monday, tearing down barricades and clashing with police.

The chaotic scenes came after police carried out a dawn operation to reopen some key roads blocked by protesters for more than 15 days.

The dawn operation by Hong Kong police is what is being seen as a signal from Beijing that it would not allow the agitation to go on much longer.

According to state media, police officers made public announcements Monday morning that they were not attempting to remove the protesters from their camping sites but only trying to retrieve equipment belonging to the police force.

Protesters were rebuilding barriers Monday after about two dozen men wearing surgical masks to hide their faces tore at the metal barricades that demonstrators have put in place. The men, who used box cutters to snap the cable ties connecting the barricades, scuffled with protesters and police who tried to stop them.

An angry crowd of several hundred people then descended on the scene, rushing up to the barricades and attempting to storm the protest zone. They punched their fists in the air and chanted “Open the road!” About a dozen taxi drivers joined in, driving their cabs

up to the barricades and leaning on their horns to express their anger over the traffic disruptions

A line of police officers held the crowd back, keeping them sepa rated from the protesters on the other side of the barriers.

Despite Monday’s chaos, the protests continue as the agitators get ready for a long-term struggle

But the removal of the bar ricades by the police probably indicates that authorities will not allow large-scale protests — as seen earlier this month — anymore. Chief executive, CY Leung, has said that the protest ers will not be removed from the sites until the government was forced to do so.