Hong Kong police battle scores of protesters as campus is under siege

HONG KONG >> Police tightened their siege of a university campus where hundreds of protesters remained trapped overnight Tuesday in the latest dramatic episode in months of protests against growing Chinese control over the semi-autonomous city.

In yet another escalation for the movement, protests raged across other parts of the city, fueled by palpable public anger over the police blockade of Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the desire to help the students stuck inside.

Now in its fifth month, the Hong Kong protest movement has steadily intensified as local and Beijing authorities harden their positions and refuse to make concessions. Universities have become the latest battleground for the protesters, who used gasoline bombs and bowsand-arrows in their fight to keep riot police backed by armored cars and water cannon off of two campuses in the past week.

China, which took control of the former British in 1997 promising to let it retain its autonomy, flexed its muscles, sending troops outside their barracks over the weekend in a cleanup operation.