Flights cancelled after HK protesters target airport

HONG KONG: More than a dozen flights were cancelled Sunday as thousands of pro-democracy activists blocked routes to Hong Kong´s airport, a day after protesters and police fought pitched battles in some of the worst violence seen in the city since unrest began three months ago.

At least 16 flights were cancelled, the airport´s website said, with the departure hall packed with a backlog of passengers who had struggled to make it to the terminals.

Earlier, operators of the Airport Express train suspended services after the station was besieged, while black-clad protesters — hiding from CCTV cameras under umbrellas — built barricades at the bus terminus and attempted to stop traffic on the main road leading to the facility.

Stranded travellers were forced to abandon their lifts and drag their luggage along the airport road. Sunday´s action is the latest in three months of increasingly violent protests sparked initially by opposition to a proposed law that would have allowed extraditions to mainland China, but which morphed into a broader anti-government movement.

Outside one airport terminal, protesters set off fire extinguishers, piled luggage trolleys into makeshift road barricades and smashed surveillance cameras before being driven away by police. “It´s out of our control,” said Andy Tang, 26, returning to Australia from a week´s holiday in Hong Kong. “So there´s no point getting annoyed about it.”

The airport is covered by an injunction banning protesters from entering — imposed after a shutdown in August which ended in ugly clashes — but protesters have routinely ignored legal moves to ban their actions. On Sunday city sanitation workers were seen clearing debris and removing graffiti after a night of pitched battles between protesters and police. Hours earlier, a huge fire burned in the city´s commercial district as chaos ripped through the centre of a city usually renowned for its stability and prosperity.

Hardcore demonstrators Saturday hurled petrol bombs at government buildings and police, who responded with tear gas and water cannon laced with chemical dye before making mass arrests inside the city´s underground metro stations.