By nightfall, the police had sprayed clouds of tear gas in three busy districts on Hong Kong’s main island and arcs of blue-dyed water from cannons mounted on trucks. Battalions of riot police officers were patrolling the streets of major commercial districts as if they were battlefields, and protesters were setting fires at intersections and the entrances to shuttered subway stations.

In the luxury Admiralty shopping district, the police sprayed blue-dyed water at protesters outside the Hong Kong headquarters of the Chinese military. They also pinned protesters to the ground, including one who was bleeding profusely from his skull, near a line of police vans and buses that had rolled up to the site with lights flashing. Two protesters were seen lying unconscious in the street.

As dusk fell, demonstrators in the Wan Chai district continued to toss Molotov cocktails at the police while the clanging of bricks on metal street signs — the protesters’ call to arms — echoed through a canyon of tall apartment buildings. Tourists wearing face masks could be seen huddling behind the barricaded plate glass door of their hotel; an older man stepped into the road to yell obscenities at the police.

The police fired tear gas and rubber bullets, and the local news media reported that an Indonesian journalist in Wan Chai had been struck in the eye. The South China Morning Post newspaper also reported, citing an unnamed police source, that an undercover officer had fired a live round into the air in the district after a group of protesters attacked the officer and three undercover colleagues.