Police officer hit by arrow in HK during clashes
Hong Kong, China - A police officer was struck by an arrow fired by a Hong Kong protester on Sunday, as fierce clashes raged around a campus which has turned into a base for a prodemocracy movement whose unrelenting protests have plunged the city into turmoil.
Protests have tremored through the global financial hub since June with many in the city of 7.5mn people venting fury at eroding freedoms under Chinese rule.
China has repeatedly warned that it will not tolerate the dissent, and there have been concerns that Beijing could send in troops to put an end to the unrest.
Chinese President Xi Jinping this week issued his most strident comments on the crisis, saying it threatened the ‘ one country, two systems’ model under which Hong Kong has been ruled since the 1997 handover from Britain.
On Sunday scores of activists dug in at Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) vowing to defend it from police and to maintain a blockade on the nearby Cross Harbour Tunnel, which has been closed for several days.
As dusk fell, police tried to retake a footbridge over the tunnel but were met by a barrage of petrol bombs that caused a huge blaze.
Elsewhere in the densely-populated Kowloon district clusters of protesters, cocooned behind umbrellas, traded petrol bombs for tear gas with police as violence rumbled into the night.
Earlier, activists parried an attempt by police to break through into the PolyU campus, firing rocks from a homemade catapult from the university roof.
Policemen were met by a barrage of petrol bombs as they tried to retake a footbridge