Hong Kong police fired rubber bullets and tear gas at protestors protesting the extradition bill that will allow extradition to China.
As the protest descended into chaos, police used rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse the demonstrators.
Tens of thousands of protesters had gathered peacefully outside the Chinese-ruled city’s legislature before tempers flared, some charging police with umbrellas.
Police pushed the protestors back, with warning to use force.
Ambulances sped toward the protest area as panic spread through the crowd, with many people trying to flee the stinging tear gas.
More than 10 people were wounded in the clashes.
Police used pepper spray, tear gas and batons to force crowds back. Some shops put up their shutters at the nearby IFC, one of Hong Kong’s tallest buildings.
Civil Human Rights Front, which organized a protest on Sunday that it estimated saw more than a million people take to the streets in protest against the extradition bill, accused police of using unnecessary violence.
The protesters, most of them young people dressed in black, had erected barricades as they prepared to hunker down for an extended occupation of the area, in scenes reminiscent of pro-democracy “Occupy” protests that gridlocked the former British colony in 2014.
The violence had died down by early evening under light rain, but tens of thousands still jammed the streets in and around Lung Wo Road, a main east-west artery near the offices of embattled Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam.
Opposition to the bill on Sunday triggered Hong Kong’s biggest political demonstration since its handover from British to Chinese rule in 1997 under a “once country, two systems” deal guaranteeing it special autonomy, including freedom of assembly, free press and an independent judiciary.
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