Hong Kong police play catch-up as anti-government protesters wreak havoc across the city
- Causeway Bay, Tseung Kwan O and Kwun Tong among array of areas hit, with roads blocked and tear gas fired
- Highly organised demonstrators create enough chaos to draw out police before moving on to another target
Tear gas filled the streets of Causeway Bay on Sunday as Hong Kong’s premier shopping district became the latest battleground for repeated clashes between police and anti-government protesters who seized key roads, sparking chaos that continued to spread across the city late into the night.
Protesters, many of them young radicals who have declared war on the embattled police force, shut down the Cross-Harbour Tunnel, a key link between Hong Kong Island and Kowloon, for the second straight day, unleashing traffic bedlam on the eve of a citywide strike that could be even more chaotic, with an expected turnout of half a million.
After two hours of tolerating the mayhem they wrought – confronting police and putting up metal and water barricades along the two main traffic arteries running through Causeway Bay and Wan Chai, Hennessy Road and Gloucester Road – riot police swooped in, kicked away the barricades and fired multiple rounds of tear gas.
Protesters embarked on a new tactic of advancing and retreating on a moving battlefield that stretched from Tseung Kwan O to Causeway Bay and Kennedy Town and the Cross-Harbour Tunnel.
Before midnight, they also attacked and vandalised police stations in Kwun Tong and Lam Tin.
The method to the mayhem appeared to be creating enough chaos to draw out the police before moving on to another target, leaving the force to play catch-up.