Elite police anti-terror and airport squads deployed to clear barricades
More than 100 officers from the elite anti-terrorist and airport security units were among the 1,000 police deployed yesterday to clear barricades in Mong Kok.
More than 100 officers from the elite anti-terrorist and airport security units were among the 1,000 police deployed yesterday to clear barricades in Mong Kok that have blocked a busy road junction for nearly three weeks.
At about 5.15am, waves of officers in riot gear advanced on the intersection of Nathan Road and Argyle Street - the centre of Occupy Mong Kok - and surrounded the fewer than 100 protesters.
Wearing blue jump suits and protective gloves, the officers moved in and quickly dismantled barricades behind the cordon line. They used bolt cutters, chainsaws and sledgehammers to tear down barricades made of bamboo poles and wooden planks in at least four spots on the junction. They pushed aside concrete flowerbeds, rubbish bins and tents along with makeshift shrines, umbrellas and other items.
The "Occupy Mong Kok" main tent at the junction was "cleared within a few minutes", one witness said. All the barricades in the Mong Kok protest zone were torn down in about 20 minutes before trucks with cranes moved in to remove debris and other structures.
On Tuesday, officers were also deployed to clear Queensway in Admiralty and one carriageway of Hennessy Road in Causeway Bay.
A police source said officers from the elite counterterrorism and internal security division and the airport security unit were deployed to form a squad with colleagues from the weapons training division in an operation codenamed Solarpeak.
"The elite squad is designed to break up demonstrators and haul them away" when they lock arms during a sit-in, the source said.
