Anti-government protesters unleash chaos across Hong Kong in unprecedented citywide rampage
- City leader Carrie Lam warns demonstrators have gone beyond protests to attack national sovereignty
- Police have fired 1,000 rounds of tear gas since the first clashes erupted on June 9, arresting 502 people in total
Defiant protesters unleashed chaos and violence across Hong Kong on Monday in an unprecedented escalation of radical action against the government and police, even as the city’s embattled leader toughened her stance and warned that they had gone beyond protests to attack the nation’s sovereignty.
After calling a citywide strike aimed at crippling traffic and daily business, protesters throughout the day and into the night besieged police stations in Tin Shui Wai, Tai Po, Sha Tin, Tsim Sha Tsui, Wong Tai Sin, Sham Shui Po, Tuen Mun and Tsuen Wan, launching arson attacks at some of them.
Police fired tear gas in flashpoints stretching across seven districts, saying they were using “minimal force” to disperse radical protesters who blocked more than a dozen main roads and three major tunnels, set up barricades, started fires, and attacked law enforcers with petrol bombs, bricks and other projectiles.
More than 80 people were arrested, nine of them in the working-class neighbourhood of Wong Tai Sin, which was caught up in six hours of clashes between protesters and police who fired multiple rounds of tear gas and sponge grenades.
Protesters threw petrol bombs into the police station’s compound and again targeted the disciplinary service quarters nearby, where officers’ families live.
In a shocking escalation in North Point, protesters were attacked in the middle of the road, in full public view, by about a dozen men with bamboo poles.
