Exclusive | Bombers planned attack on officers at Sunday’s protest march, Hong Kong police say after two home-made devices found at Wan Chai school

Detectives investigating the seizure of two powerful home-made bombs at a Hong Kong school campus believe they were intended for an attack on police at a massive anti-government march over the weekend, sources said on Tuesday.

The apparent bomb plot, which emerged after six months of social unrest and political turmoil, prompted the city’s biggest police association to warn that the current security situation was at its “most alarming” in decades, even worse than during a wave of armed robberies in the 1990s.

Superintendent Lau Siu-pong said on the official police Facebook page that more explosives and firearms could be similarly hidden across the city, and the two bombs were fully functional and primed to kill and maim.

“We suspect that criminals temporarily stored the bombs there and intended to detonate them elsewhere,” Lau said. “Based on our intelligence and initial investigation, we believe it might not be an isolated case.”

Police insiders told the Post the would-be bombers were forced to abandon the attack planned for Sunday after a group of their associates were arrested in a raid that morning, hours before the march – which attracted hundreds of thousands – started at Victoria Park in Causeway Bay.

The bombs, packed with 5kg (11lb) each of high-grade explosives along with shrapnel in the form of nails, were not intended to target Wah Yan College Hong Kong in Wan Chai, where they were found, sources said.