Riot police disperse anti-extradition bill protesters during a mass demonstration after a woman was shot in the eye, at the Hong Kong international airport, in Hong Kong China August 13, 2019. Thomas Peter | Reuters

The Hong Kong airport returned to calm as most protesters left the airport early Wednesday morning. Earlier, riot police clashed with pro-democracy protesters late Tuesday night, moving into the terminal where the demonstrators had shut down operations at the busy transport hub for two straight days. The Tuesday night demonstrations involved officers armed with pepper spray and batons confronting the protesters who used luggage carts to barricade entrances to the airport terminal. Police took several people into a police van waiting at the entrance to the airport's arrivals hall. Police said they tried to help ambulance officers reach an injured man whom protesters had detained on suspicion of being an undercover agent. Protesters also detained a second man who they suspected of being an undercover agent. After emptying out his belongings, they found a blue T-shirt that has been worn by pro-Beijing supporters that they said was evidence he was a spy.

Earlier in the day, authorities were forced to cancel all remaining flights as the city's pro-Beijing leader warned that the protesters had pushed events onto a "path of no return." After a brief period when flights were able to take off and land, the airport authority suspended check-in services for departing flights as of 4:30 p.m. Departing flights that had completed the process were able to continue to operate. It said it did not expect arriving flights to be affected, although dozens were already canceled. The authority advised people not to come to the airport, one of the world's busiest. More than 200 flights were canceled Monday and the airport was effectively shut down with no flights taking off or landing. Passengers have been forced to stay in the city while airlines tried to find other ways to get them to their destinations. For Grace Bendal, a 43-year-old contractor from the Philippines, Tuesday was the second straight day she came to the airport only to learn flights were canceled. She spent the weekend in Hong Kong with her primary school-age children, who were eager to return to classes. She said they have already missed two days of school and the extra day in the city has cost her around 3,000 Hong Kong dollars ($400). Though there were no airline employees at check-in counters Tuesday evening, Bendal said she and her children planned to stay at the airport all night. "I cannot blame them, because they are fighting for something," Bendal said of the protesters. "But then it's not right if we are the ones suffering." The airport disruptions are an escalation of a summer of demonstrations aimed at what many Hong Kong residents see as an increasing erosion of the freedoms they were promised in 1997 when Communist Party-ruled mainland China took over what had been a British colony. The protests have built on an opposition movement that shut down much of the city for seven weeks in 2014 before it eventually fizzled and its leaders were jailed on public disturbance charges. The central government in Beijing has ominously characterized the current protest movement as something approaching "terrorism" that poses an "existential threat" to citizens. While Beijing tends to define terrorism broadly, extending it especially to nonviolent movements opposing government policies in minority regions such as Tibet and Xinjiang, its use of the term in relation to Hong Kong raised the prospect of greater violence and the possible suspension of legal rights for those detained.

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said the instability, chaos and violence have placed the city on a "path of no return." The black-clad demonstrators have shown no sign of letting up on their campaign to force Lam's administration to respond to their demands, including that she step down and scrap proposed legislation under which some suspects could be sent to mainland China, where critics say they could face torture and unfair or politically charged trials. Lam has rejected all calls for dialogue, part of what analysts say is a strategy to wear down the opposition movement through police action while prompting demonstrators to take more violent and extreme actions that will turn the Hong Kong public against them. At the airport, protesters discussed among themselves whether they should simply block all access to the facility. Meanwhile, paramilitary police were assembling across the border in the city of Shenzhen for exercises that some saw as a threat to increase force against the mostly young protesters who have turned out by the thousands in the past 10 weeks. On Tuesday, President Donald Trump tweeted that U.S. intelligence informed him that Chinese troops were being moved to the Hong Kong border.

Anti-government protesters try to prevent a passenger from breaching a barricade in front of departure gates, during a demonstration at Hong Kong Airport, China August 13, 2019. Thomas Peter | Reuters