Police fired tear gas at black-clad protesters in Hong Kong on Saturday after setting fire to subway stations and destroying buildings, including China's official Xinhua news agency.
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As part of the worst acts of violence that have hit the city in weeks, small groups of masked protesters fled to the central business district lighting street barricades and dropping gasoline bombs through streets filled with banks and jewelry stores and first-class fashion stores, as riot police and water cannon trucks approached.
Demonstrators set fire to subway station entrances, while some stores and businesses were also vandalized, including the offices of China's Xinhua news agency where doors were smashed and fire and paint bombs were thrown into the lobby. .
Through Facebook, a spokesman for Xinhua said that "this practice by protesters demonstrates once again that stopping violence and restoring order is the most important and urgent task of Hong Kong today.
Hong Kong media associations also condemned vandalism at the Xinhua agency, one of the key symbols of the Chinese presence in Hong Kong, calling for an end to the violence and urging the police to treat the matter seriously.
Demonstrators this Saturday also gathered along the port in the hotel and shopping district of Tsim Sha Tsui, at the tip of the Kowloon peninsula, with dozens of passengers on the Star ferry chanting "Hong Kong people resist".
Other activists, many of them with banned face masks, erected metal fences and used a football goal to build barricades near the park, a traditional venue for rallies and vigils for decades, their actions masked by others with umbrellas.
"The people of Hong Kong, resist," they shouted. "The revolution of our time.
Protesters are angry at the perception that China is interfering with Hong Kong's autonomy, including its legal system, since the city returned from British rule to Chinese rule in 1997.